Sometimes you can tell a hole-in-one by sound, not sight.
And Blue Devil head coach Jamie Green knows a hole-in-one when he hears it.
“I was a hole behind. I was walking with another player behind him and we looked up onto the green and heard a pretty loud roar,” Green said. “You know the sound of a cheer of a hole-in-one…. We looked up there and saw lots of arms raised.”
Adam Sumrall scored a hole-in-one in his second round of play at the Fighting Illini Invitational in Olympia Fields, Ill. The South Bend, Ind. native recorded his second ace in tournament play for Duke, helping his team to a fourth place finish overall.
Fellow Duke senior Brinson Paolini finished the tournament tied for second place, five shots behind the winner, Stanford’s Patrick Rodgers, who also won the Invitational last year as a freshman. Rodgers was the only player to finish the tournament under par, finishing with a 3-under-par 207.
Paolini, who was paired with Rodgers in the final round of play, finished the tournament with a 2-over-par 212.
Green noted that playing alongside the tournament leader is no easy feat.
“Neither of them could do anything about the other guy, nor did they know how anyone else stood at that time,” Green said. “But to watch the guy with you get two, three or even four shots ahead, that’s definitely depressing.”
Duke senior Julian Suri finished just two shots behind Paolini to earn himself a seventh-place finish with a 4-over-par 214.
The Blue Devils, who finished tied with Stanford in fourth place with a 33-over-par 873, played consistently throughout the entire tournament. Duke recorded an 11-over-par 291 in all three rounds of play.
“They played it as a par-70 as opposed to the scorecard which listed the course as a par-72,” Green said. “So what they do is take some par-fives and just call them par-fours.... So you had a couple of par-fours that were 500-plus yards. So if you have the wind in your face, it is a hard green to get to in two shots.”
Arkansas, which led the field after the first two days of play, went into the final round with a 12-shot lead over its nearest competition, Auburn. The Razorbacks ultimately finished the tournament 14-over-par and 13 shots ahead of second-place Florida. With the fourth-place finish, Green knows his team has room to improve.
“We were hoping for much better rounds, especially [Tuesday],” Green said. “We had a pretty good round going through 14. We had made nine birdies, but on the last four holes we ended up eight over. That was obviously not the finish we were hoping for, but we did play a lot of good holes.”
The Blue Devils return home for the Rod Myers Invitational at the Duke University Golf Course Saturday Oct. 13. The tournament marks the Blue Devils’ only tournament on their home green.
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