Wang makes the final point as Duke captures its seventh NCAA crown

   Ever since the NCAA added match play to decide the women’s national champion, the Pac-12 had dominated, the conference accounting for all four match-play winners. Each of the last two springs, three of the four semifinalists were from the Pac-12.

   But this year’s Final Match was all Tobacco Road, an Atlantic Coast Conference showdown between No. 3 Duke and No. 6 Wake Forest Wednesday at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark.

   And these ancient ACC rivals brought the drama. Three of the five matches went to extra holes and it wasn’t over until Miranda Wang, a redshirt sophomore from China, outlasted Wake Forest’s Letizia Bagnoli, a freshman from Italy, on the 20^th hole to give the Blue Devils their seventh national championship, all under head coach Dan Brooks, with a 3-2 victory.

   It was Duke’s first national title since 2014, the final time that the champion was crowned purely at stroke play. It’s not that Duke wasn’t always in there swinging. The Blue Devils had one of the great players in the history of Division I women’s golf in Leona Maguire of Ireland, who helped them reach match play in her final year last spring only to fall to Southern California in the quarterfinals.

   Somewhere Leona Maguire and her twin sister Lisa were shouting at the television during the tense final hour when the championship was decided.

   And tense it was. It is why match play is here to stay in the NCAA Championship. The national championship could have gone either way, the emotions of both teams and their fans rising and falling with each shot, with each putt.

   Duke got a point on the board when Ana Belac, a junior from Slovenia, cruised to a 5 and 3 victory over Vanessa Knecht, a freshman from Switzerland. Every other match went to the 18^th hole or beyond.

   The most intriguing matchup in the Final Match had Duke’s Jaravee Boonchant, a sophomore from Thailand and No. 25 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), taking on Wake Forest’s Jennifer Kupcho, a senior from Westminster, Colo. and No. 1 in the Women’s WAGR.

    Boonchant battled from behind all day, went ahead with a birdie at the 17^th and then lost the 18^th hole with a bogey to send it to extra holes. But Boonchant pulled out a huge point for the Blue Devils by beating Kupcho, one of the top players in college golf for the last three years, on the 19^th hole.

   Wake Forest’s Emilia Migliaccio, a sophomore from Cary, N.C. and No. 16 in the Women’s WAGR, got the Demon Deacons on the board with a hard-fought 1-up victory over Gina Kim, a freshman from Chapel Hill, N.C.

   Earlier in the day, it was Kim who delivered in the clutch for the Blue Devils, making birdie on the 18^th hole to edge Arizona’s Bianca Pangdanganan, a senior from the Philippines, and clinch Duke’s 3-2 semifinal victory over the defending champion Wildcats and send it to the Final Match.

   Wake Forest’s Siyun Liu, a junior from China, pulled out a victory on the 20^th hole over Duke’s Virginia Elena Carta, a senior from Italy, to knot up the Final Match at 2-2 and leave Wang and Bagnoli to decide the national championship.

   When Bagnoli sent her second shot on the second extra hole into a penalty area, it was Wang’s match to win and win it she did.

   Last month,  Wake Forest, behind Migliaccio’s individual title, had cruised to the ACC crown at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, N.C. Duke finished 18 shots behind the Demon Deacons in third place.

   With Kupcho determined to end her college career by delivering a team crown at Wake Forest, the Demon Deacons had all kinds of momentum as the spring wore on.

   Some violent spring weather had altered the schedule at The Blessings. The semifinals, originally scheduled to be played Tuesday afternoon, were played Wednesday morning.

   With Kupcho claiming a 6 and 4 victory over Auburn’s Kaleigh Telfer, a sophomore from South Africa, and Migliaccio cruising to a 7 and 5 decision over Brooke Sansome, a redshirt freshman from Pike Road, Ala., Wake Forest stormed into the Final Match on the strength of a 4.5-.5 victory over the 13^th-ranked Tigers.

   It was not so easy for Duke in the semifinal as No. 4-ranked Arizona wasn’t going to give up its national title without a fight.

   Carta pulled out a 2 and 1 decision over Sandra Nordass, a junior from Norway, and Belac claimed a 2 and 1 victory over Ya Chun Chang, a freshman from Taiwan.

   But Boonchant suffered a 4 and 3 setback at the hands of Haley Moore, a senior from Escondido, Calif. and such a big part of the Wildcats’ success these last two springs, and Wang fell, 2 and 1, to Yu-Sang Hou.

   That left it up to Kim and the freshman got the job done, sending the Blue Devils to the Final Match with her huge win over Pangdanganan.

   It was tough not to be rooting a little for Kupcho. She won an NCAA individual title a year ago at Karsten Creek, played on a very impressive United States side in a Curtis Cup win over Great Britain & Ireland, finished second in the LPGA’s Q-Series last fall, and gained fans all over the country with her victory in the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship this spring.

   Duke knew just what it was getting into in the Final Match with Kupcho in the opposing lineup.

   The bad news for Wake Forest and the rest of the ACC, maybe the rest of the country, is that reinforcements are on the way for Duke.

   Some followers of college golf might not have been paying attention, but during the week between conference championships and the NCAA regionals, a couple of Duke recruits, left-hander Erica Shepherd, winner of the 2017 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, and her buddy, Megan Furtney of Elgin, Ill., teamed up to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Timuquana Country Club in Jacksonville, Fla.

   Shepherd has demonstrated an affinity for match play. That prowess might come in handy the next time Duke gets into match play in the NCAA Championship.