After a few weeks of much-needed rest, the Blue Devils have one last chance to tee it up before putting their clubs away for the winter.
No. 7 Duke will compete in its final tournament of the fall season this weekend at Wendy’s Kiawah Classic at Turtle Point in Kiawah Island, S.C. The three rounds will be played Sunday through Tuesday at Turtle Point Golf Course—a 7,061-yard, par-72 Jack Nicklaus creation—which is one of five championship courses at the scenic Kiawah Island Golf Resort.
This will be the first time in three weeks the Blue Devils will be competing with a full slate of golfers, following a draining three-week stretch that sent the team back and forth across the country to Oregon, Tennessee and Indiana.
“We really had a little bit of a break where some of the guys went home, some of them saw swing instructors, some of them saw some family—took a little bit of a breather,” Duke head coach Jamie Green said. “So I know they’re glad to have a couple of days before we hit the road again Friday, and when we do, we’ll have six very strong team members.”
Despite the exhaustive schedule, Duke has exceeded expectations during the fall campaign, posting top-five finishes at each of its four events. Most recently, the Blue Devils came in third out of 12 teams at the Crooked Stick Intercollegiate, buoyed by top-10 finishes from sophomore Adam Wood and junior Matt Oshrine.
Wood appears to have taken the next step after an impressive freshman season, leading the team in scoring average by more than 1.5 strokes this year. His performance has been rock-solid throughout the fall slate, placing in the top 20 in each event and in the top five twice.
Green noted that Turtle Point—known for its tight, tree-lined fairways, guarded greens and ocean breeze wafting across the course—could be a good fit for Wood’s consistent style of play, as the Zionsville, Ind., native should be a good bet to be near the top of the leaderboard this weekend.
“Adam is usually a very good ball-striker, hits a lot of fairways. His ball flight can be low and penetrating and works well in a lot of wind,” Green said. “But again, we’re going to have to get down there and see exactly what’s required coming in to a lot of those green complexes, because sometimes Nicklaus has some guarded greens where you might have to come in a little bit higher to get to front hole locations.”
Oshrine ranks second on the team behind Wood with a 72.1 scoring average, and is also second with three top-10 finishes in his inaugural campaign with the Blue Devils. Oshrine competed for Loyola for the past two seasons, but transferred to Duke to begin his junior year—and so far the results have been overwhelmingly positive.
Like Wood, Oshrine plays with a sense of calm that allows him to weather the storm and avoid the blowup holes that can ruin an entire tournament. Green pointed in particular to the Baltimore native’s touch in the short game as his strongest asset—a strength that keeps his scores low even when he’s not playing his best, and has led him to post a season-worst round of just 76, the best such mark on the team.
But with a team devoid of seniors, Oshrine’s contributions have come from more than just the scorecard.
“I think Matt has a really good way of being light in the way he goes about [preparing]. He doesn’t grind so hard all the time—sometimes some guys in our game, they can get tunnel vision to the point where they’re really off in their own world,” Green said. “Matt does a really good job of communicating with the coaches, communicating with the teammates off and on the golf course, but especially off the golf course. He’s really a funny guy, so it keeps them loose and relaxed.”
In last year’s Kiawah Classic, Duke competed at the Ocean Course, which has a much different setup and layout than this weekend’s Turtle Point venue. Green said none of the current players have ever competed at Turtle Point, which provides an extra layer of difficulty for the team this weekend.
In situations like these, Green stressed the importance of what he called “putting pressure on the golf course,” a recipe the Blue Devils will have to follow this weekend if they want to close out their fall season with yet another top-five finish.
“That phrase we use a lot, where if you’re putting it in the fairway around the greens where you can score pretty easily from, then you’re putting pressure on the golf course and you’re playing low-stress golf,” Green said. “When it’s a golf course you’re not familiar with, and the field is strong and the weather might kick up, you really want to do that as much as possible. You don’t have to put yourself in position where you’re scrambling and where your short game will have to save you. So hopefully we can do that this week.”
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