Despite having one of their deepest rosters in recent memory and one that features four seniors, the Blue Devils have been headlined by two impressive underclassmen—Alex Smalley and Chandler Eaton.
The duo’s one-two finish among Duke players in late October brought the Blue Devils their first victory of the season, and now the team is hoping to have the same success to begin the new year.
No. 19 Duke will travel to Los Cabos, Mexico, to play in the Querencia Cabo Collegiate and open its spring slate Sunday through Tuesday after nearly four months off from competition. Head coach Jamie Green said that the long offseason presented its challenges, but noted his players have taken advantage of the downtime to improve aspects of their games.
“When we kind of set the clubs aside slightly, it’s a challenging sport because we’re year-round,” Green said. “We started our spring season pretty early, it was like January 21 I think. We’ve made two trips down to Florida, a lot of competition with the guys trying to figure out who’s going to travel to that first tournament.”
Smalley, a sophomore, had what Green called the best calendar year of any Blue Devil in 2016, when he was the low medalist during stroke play of the summer’s U.S. Amateur and also paced Duke in the fall with a team-best 71.7 scoring average. His most impactful finish so far this season came at the Bridgestone Golf Collegiate, where he tied for fourth with rounds of 73, 65 and 70 and helped his team capture a key win to end the fall.
The other player who finished tied for fourth in that event was freshman Eaton, who sits close behind Smalley in scoring average with 71.8 strokes per round and also posted two other top-five finishes this season at the Golf Club of Georgia Collegiate and the Inverness Intercollegiate. The Alpharetta, Ga., native began his career with a little inconsistency, but heated up to close the fall season and has his mind on earning Freshman All-American honors with his spring play.
“A guy like Chandler stepping in in the lineup just pushes the older guys to realize, you know, ‘The spot is mine. I’ve got to go earn it every day in practice and I’ve got to be ready when we qualify for those spots,’” Green said.
One of those players that lost playing time at the hands of Eaton and Smalley’s emergence was junior Adam Wood, who will return to action this weekend. The Zionsville, Ind., native and two-time All-ACC selection struggled early on in the fall and represented the Blue Devils in just three A-team events, but bounced back at the Bridgestone Golf Collegiate to earn his first top-20 finish of the season with rounds of 70, 71 and 71.
“The corny phrase is, ‘You’re just going to take it a day at a time,’ right?” Green said. "And I think the reality of it is you can’t win the national championship in February. But other teams are preparing at a very high level and we have to do the same…. I don’t see why we wouldn’t be competitive for any championship, any tournament that we show up for. And this first one is as strong a field as we’ll probably see all year.”
Green is right, as his Blue Devils will match up against seven other ranked teams in the event, which includes No. 1 Vanderbilt, No. 6 Oklahoma State and No. 10 Georgia. Another one of the ACC’s top teams—No. 11 Wake Forest—will also tee it up in Los Cabos, creating an opportunity for Duke to test itself against the nation’s best while also seeing how it compares to a fellow strong contender for April’s ACC championship.
Junior Jake Shuman and senior Alex Matlari will round out the Blue Devil lineup, as each will make his sixth start of the year. Shuman averaged 71.9 strokes per round in the fall and leads the team in rounds under par with seven, and Matlari averages a slightly higher 72.3 strokes per round but leads the team in bogey avoidance.
At Querencia, Duke will be challenged by a narrow, par-72 layout designed by the legendary Tom Fazio. Green said the course is an unfamiliar one but knows it has elevation changes and quick greens that will significantly impact play, an insight that encouraged the team to spend extra time practicing lag putting and speed control in its preparation. To get a leg up, newly-hired assistant coach Bob Heintz left for Los Cabos a day early to scout the course and perform what Green called “a little reconnaissance work.”
“That hopefully will help our guys get a little bit of comfort, but it’s a track that none of our guys have played,” Green said. “We’ve got a mature group that’s going down there even though we’ve got a couple young guys, but they’ve all played at high levels and they know how to play on tight golf courses.”
Ben Leonard contributed reporting.
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