Although they have struggled with consistency this season, the Blue Devils hope they can play their strongest golf in their regular-season finale as they aim to get back to the NCAA championship after failing to qualify in 2016.
No. 22 Duke will compete at the Wolfpack Spring Open Friday and Saturday in Raleigh a week before opening the postseason at the ACC championship. The Blue Devils have been building momentum recently in their two most recent starts, winning the Grand Canyon Invitational as the only ranked team in the field before taking fourth at the Mason Rudolph Championship.
Head coach Jamie Green's team competed against No. 3 Vanderbilt and No. 6 Florida at the Mason Rudolph event but will be one of just two ranked teams at the par-71, 7,046 yard Lonnie Poole Golf Course along with No. 14 Clemson.
Alexander Matlari has led the way as of late for the Blue Devils. Despite only cracking the starting lineup once this fall, finishing tied for 39th at the Golf Club of Georgia Collegiate, the senior has paced Duke in scoring average this spring, racking up two top-10 finishes and finishing 3-under-par at the Mason Rudolph Championship to tie for 15th.
Matlari's length off the tee has helped him feast on par-5s, and the Leimen, Germany, native will look to continue taking advantage of the long holes this weekend.
Like Matlari, Alex Smalley has been hitting his stride lately. The sophomore has finished in the top 10 in his last two starts, including a tie for second at the Grand Canyon Invitational, after a slow start to the spring.
Smalley's recent surge has made up for a dip in play from freshman standout Chandler Eaton, the team's leader in scoring average for the entire season by a narrow margin. Eaton is averaging 71.2 strokes per round, with Matlari at 71.3 and Smalley at 71.5 for a team that will need more rounds in the 60s to challenge the nation's top teams in postseason play.
Eaton started the spring with a pair of top-10 placements but has been outside the top 20 in his last two starts, finishing third or worse in the team's fluid starting lineup. The efficient play around the greens that has made Eaton one of the better freshmen in the nation could come in handy for the Blue Devils moving forward if he can step his game up a notch entering the final stretch of the season.
Duke got 2-under-par efforts from Eaton and Adam Wood at the Mason Rudolph Championship, a positive sign for Wood, who has struggled for much of the season due in large part to slow starts. The former All-ACC golfer led the team in scoring average last year and put together rounds of 70, 71 and 70 at the team's most recent event in Franklin, Tenn.
Junior Jake Shuman and senior Matt Oshrine are the likely candidates to compete for the fifth spot in Duke's lineup this weekend. Shuman has finished outside the top 40 in three of his four spring starts, and Oshrine has finished ninth and 11th in his two starts, posing a tough dilemma for Green leading up to the postseason.
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Managing Editor 2018-19, 2019-2020 Features & Investigations Editor
A member of the class of 2020 hailing from San Mateo, Calif., Ben is The Chronicle's Towerview Editor and Investigations Editor. Outside of the Chronicle, he is a public policy major working towards a journalism certificate, has interned at the Tampa Bay Times and NBC News and frequents Pitchforks.