An interesting weekend for Blue Devils, past, future and never to be.
Some good news, some not so good.
Can you feel it. That touch of autumn in the air?
Well, a cold front did go through the Triangle over the weekend, dropping highs from the upper 90s to the low 90s.
So maybe we can keep the sweaters mothballed for a while longer. But in the world of sports fall is indeed creeping in. NFL team are in training camps, the high-school teams two miles down the road are starting practice and there’s athletic activity all over the place at the Gothic Wonderland.
But still no real athletic competition.
However, there was some interesting Duke-adjacent activity over the weekend, mostly good, some not so good, mostly on the links.
Duke’s women’s golf team has won seven NCAA titles and sent a number of players on to solid professional careers.
But no real stars. Celine Boutier may be about to change that. Boutier played at Duke from 2012 through 2016, helping the Devils to the 2014 NCAA title. She was ranked as the world’s top amateur golfer during her time at Duke and has had a solid professional career.
But nothing like what happened over the weekend. Boutier is French, with Thai parents. The 2023 Amundi Evian Championship was contested at the Evian Resort, in southeastern France and is one of the LPGA’s five majors.
Boutier simply bludgeoned the course and the field. She shot 66, 69, 67 and 68 to defeat Canada’s Brooke Henderson by six strokes. Boutier was tied for the lead after 18 holes and was all alone after 36 and 54. She birdied three of the first five holes in Sunday’s final round and cruised down the stretch.
She joins Brittany Lang (U.S. Women’s Open, 2016) as the only former Blue Devil to win women’s majors; the only Duke man to win a major is Art Wall, who captured the 1959 Masters.
Boutier also became the first French woman to win the Evian.
“It honestly has been my biggest dream ever since I started watching golf," Boutier told the media. "This tournament has always been very special to me, just even watching as a teenager. To be able to hold this trophy is pretty unbelievable.”
Some 4,500 or so miles away former Blue Devils Kevin Streelman and Adam Long teed off in the Minneapolis suburbs in the 3M Open, aiming both to do well in that one four-day event and burnish their credentials for the season-ending FedEx Cup.
Only the top-70 players make the Cup, the tally finalized after this week’s Greater Greensboro Open, technically the Wyndham Classic but always and forever the GGO for those of us who grew up in North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s.
And yes, I would have accepted the “Pop-Top Open,” a perhaps affectionate appellation given to the GGO by the players years back in acknowledgment of the alcohol-fueled gallery screaming their lungs out at every opportunity.
The top players skipped the Twin Cities but it was crucial for anyone vying for a top-70 spot. Former Duke star Alex Smalley is comfortably in at 47, so he skipped last weekend.
But he lives in Greensboro and plans to play at his home course, Sedgefield Country Club.
Smalley had a stellar career at Duke and at 26 has a chance to become a special pro player.
That left Streelman and Long to carry the Blue Devil banner in Minnesota.
Long needed a miracle to stay alive in the FedEx standings and he didn’t get it.
Long is a grinder who has carved a pretty solid career playing on pretty much every tour the continent offers. He shot nine under, which sounds pretty impressive until we realize that 24 under won the tournament.
He tied for 37th and sits at 139th in the FedEx standings.
Long is 35 and his best chances may have passed him by. But Streelman is 44 and admitted on TV that he won’t have many more chances at winning on the tour; he has two career wins.
Streelman was tied for the lead several times last weekend and was never off the leaderboard over the weekend. But no one was going to catch Lee Hodges, who garnered his first PGA win with a wire-to-wire 24-under blitz.
But a funny thing happened to Streelman in the clubhouse. He and Martin Laird were safely in third place, tied at 17 under, with Hodges at 23 under and J.T. Poston at 20 under, finishing up on 18.
Now, 18 is a par-five, with water. I understand what Poston was thinking; reach the green in two, make an eagle putt and maybe Hodges wobbles and we’re talking playoff.
But Poston rather made a hash of 18, a shot into a penalty area, then another into one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, then a 3-putt from 25 feet or so and he was signing for a triple-bogey eight, moving him into a tie for second with Streelman and Laird.
Going from third to second after your round ends. Not a bad way to pocket some coin.
Streelman shot 64, 66, 69 and 68 in Minnesota.
The second-place finish left Streelman 84th in the FedEx standings, on the outside looking in, with one chance left to move up.
He’s made the FedEx Cup 15 years in a row, so he knows what’s at stake. The top-70 are guaranteed tour cards for next season.
And such notables as Shane Lowry (76th), Justin Thomas (79th) and Adam Scott (81st) also will be seeking to move up. Not an easy ask.
If Streelman is nearing the end of his career, then Bryan Kim is at the beginning. Kim is an incoming freshman from Maryland. A week ago Kim was considered a nice recruit for Jamie Green’s Duke men’s golf team, good enough to play his way into the match play portion of the 2023 USGA Junior Amateur Golf Championship, shooting 144 over two days.
The junior championship is a big deal. Tiger Woods won the tournament three times, Jordan Spieth twice. Other winners include such notables as Johnny Miller, David Duval, Hunter Mahan, Brian Harman, Scottie Scheffler and Will Zalatoris.
Jason Widener won in 1988 before going on to a standout career at Duke that did not translate into a standout career at the professional level.
The tournament’s final week is match play, 64 players in the first round, compressing to 32 and so forth. Kim had failed to make the match-play portion in two previous tries and was seeded 52nd.
But Kim posted wins by scores of 6&5, 1-up and 3&2. He trailed 21st seed Edan Cui by one hole with two remaining in the quarterfinals but birdied the final two holes to notch the win. Kim never trailed in a 2&1 semifinal win over eighth seed Will Hartman in the semifinals
The 36-hole (if needed) title match was against New Zealand’s Joshua Bai, the sixth seed.
The finals were scheduled to be 18 holes in the morning, then a civilized lunch, then 18 holes in the afternoon to wrap up the busy week.
Oh, did I mention that the tournament was contested in Charleston, South Carolina? In July?
What could possibly go wrong?
Yes, we saw our expected supply of heat and humidity, with an occasional alligator in a pond.
We got through the morning round Saturday and a few holes of the afternoon before thunderstorms blew through. The match was suspended and resumed Sunday on the 26th hole.
It’s hard for 36 holes over two days to be 100 percent suspenseful. But this was darned close. Neither player ever led by more than two holes, more holes won with birdies than lost with bogies. Kim showed a deft touch around the greens, a solid putting stroke and an absolute refusal to get rattled when he fell behind.
The two teenagers were tied with two holes left. Kim seized the lead with a eight-foot birdie putt on the 35th hole and closed out the match 2-up when Bai conceded the final hole.
Kim is the lowest seed to win the tournament since 2002. He had 10 birdies and three bogies in those final 36 holes.
The win qualifies Kim for the U.S. Amateur Championships, to be contested in Colorado in mid-August and the 2024 U.S, Open, which will be played at iconic Pinehurst No. 2.
Like I said, big deal.
“It really hasn't sunk in yet,” Kim said right after the event. “Especially coming into this week, I hadn't made a cut at a USGA event, but to not only make the cut but win all six of my matches, especially against all these great competitors, it just means the world.”
Fingers crossed but hopefully four years to watch Kim represent Duke at a high level.
Which brings me to the bad news. This time last week Riley Jackson was arguably the best girl’s high-school soccer player in the country.
Note the past tense. It’s not that Riley isn’t good any more. She’s just not a high school player any more.
And she’s no longer headed to Duke University.
Jackson is from the Atlanta suburbs. She was 2021-’22 Gatorade National Player of the Year as a junior and the top player in the 2022 U17 World Cup. She’s a 17-year-old midfielder and was scheduled to graduate from high school next spring.
And then matriculate to Duke. The Blue Devils secured her commitment over all the top powers, including the one eight miles down the road. She was the highest ranked player to ever commit to the Duke women’s program.
But last week she announced that she was forgoing her remaining amateur eligibility to sign with the North Carolina Courage of the National Women’s Soccer League.
I am told that Duke did not see this coming. Jackson seems to have been motivated by a desire to advance to the national team sooner rather than later, which is curious when one considers that most members of the USWNT played college soccer. That includes Alex Morgan (California), Sophia Smith (Stanford), Emily Fox (UNC) and Julie Ertz (Santa Clara), among others.
Note that 2022 Hermann Award winner Michelle Cooper left Duke after her sophomore season to go pro and pursue her USWNT dream.
Cooper was picked second in the NWSL draft and has three goals and no assists through 15 games for the Kansas City Current.
The top pick in the 2023 NWSL draft was Alyssa Thompson who signed out of high school after committing to Stanford.
Jackson isn’t actually going to play right away for the Courage, whose home field is about five miles from where I live. But she’s a pro.
The Courage have been one of the league’s more successful franchises and Jackson said “I’m just beyond excited to be here. The atmosphere here is the best in the U.S., with what I’ve seen so far. And this jersey with my last name on it makes it even more real.”
There used to be a time when top prep players were beyond excited to be at top college programs. Perhaps that ship has sailed.
As an aside Courage head coach Sean Nahas and UNC associate head coach Damon Nahas are brothers.
Just the facts, ma’am.
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I’ll be making some tweaks going into year two of JimSumnerSports. Look for a site update later this week.
Hope the adjustment sticks. His driving has been erratic lately. Maybe that fixed it.
Good point on Leona. She has the game. She just needs to learn how to close on Sunday.