Wake Forest Athletics
Gold Rush Feature: ACC Champ
5/12/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
This article was originally published in the April 30 edition of Gold Rush.
Wake Forest junior Cheyenne Woods prepared for her final round of the ACC Championships with the song "Sure Thing" by Miguel playing in her earbuds off her iPod.
She typically listens to music and "puts a song in her head" before she goes out to play a round, and this day Woods was a sure thing. She shot a bogey-free 3-under 68 on Sunday, April 17, at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro to win the ACC women's individual golf title. Her victory marked the third straight year that a different Demon Deacon player won individual medalist honors.
Woods finished the 54-hole event at 5-under par, seven shots better than Allie White of North Carolina, which won the team title this year and denied the Deacons of a third straight ACC team title. Wake Forest finished fourth behind North Carolina, Duke and Virginia this year.
"Going in we thought we could win and had beaten Virginia, North Carolina and Duke in the last month, so we were pretty confident," said Dianne Dailey, the longtime Wake Forest women's golf coach. "But at the same time, that's a course that can eat you up if you get ahead of yourself. If you put it in the wrong places, you can have some big numbers, and that's what happened to us. We didn't play like we wanted to play the first two days, and the second day we had a three-hour delay but got out of most of the bad weather. When we went back out, we only had to play one hole.
"Cheyenne, however, just played flawless golf. To play three rounds under par on that golf course under those conditions is just remarkable and shows what a great player she is. The night before we had a team meeting, and I asked Cheyenne to tell us about her secrets, and the team just started clapping for her. They were really pulling for her."
Playing Sedgefield's Donald Ross design, the team prepared for the ACC Championships by playing at nearby Forsyth Country Club, another Ross- designed course that has been recently redesigned to match Ross' original design. Woods shot 65 playing a practice round from the men's tees that day. "That gave her some confidence, and I think it broke the course record for women playing from the men's tees," Dailey said.
Woods and White started the day tied for the lead at 2-under par. Woods, who played five groups ahead of White, had pars on her first six holes of the day. She took her first lead of the day after hitting her approach to 10 feet on the par-3 seventh and rolling in a birdie putt. On the par-3 12th, Woods hit the middle of the green and drilled a 15-foot birdie putt to take a four-shot lead. After solid pars on Nos. 14 and 15, she closed out her round with three pars to finish with three straight under-par rounds (70-70-68).
Woods became just the third player in school history to shoot three under-par rounds at the same tournament. Alexandra Armas did it at two different tournaments during the 1995-96 season, and Michelle Shin set the school record this past fall with rounds of 65-70-71 at the Mason Rudolph Challenge.
Prior to the ACC Championships, Woods' best finish of the season was a tie for third at the Northrup Gruman Regional Challenge back in February. She had hovered just outside the top 10 at the Bryan National Collegiate and Liz Murphey Collegiate Challenge with 12th and 11th place finishes, respectively. However, she but saved her best performance of the season for the ACC Championships.
"The whole weekend I felt like I was playing the best that I had all year," Woods said. "I had a lot of confidence, and every day I just knew how I wanted to play each hole. As long as I went with my plan, I felt like I would come out with a decent score. I was tied for the lead the previous year at the ACCs, and I ended up shooting 78, so this year I tried to play my own game, stick to what I was doing. Sedgefield has always been one of my favorite courses to play all year. I stayed comfortable on the course all weekend."
The 5-under par total ties Woods' lowest career 54-hole tournament, and it also is a school record at the ACC Championships. She bested Shin's total of 2-under 211 set at last year's event. Woods joins fellow Deacons Natalie Sheary, who won in 2009, and Michelle Shin, who won in 2010, as ACC champions.
"Michelle (Shin) told me if I didn't win she was going to kick my butt because she was really rooting for me as the team was," Woods said. "My sophomore year I had a good year fall and spring, but coming back this year something was off, so I went home and worked with my coach, and this semester it was a lot better. It showed me my game was back with the regionals and nationals coming up. Wake has always had a good golf program, and to come away with an ACC title feels good, and it's something I'll always remember."
The Demon Deacons finished the tournament with a round of 298, the only sub-300 round of the day, which was good enough for fourth place at 52-over par. North Carolina won by 24 shots over Duke. The Tar Heels shot rounds of 289 and 286 in the first two rounds to build a comfortable 24-shot lead through 36 holes with rainy and windy conditions on Saturday that made it difficult for players to score low.
Sheary, who was playing in her fourth-straight ACC Championship, finished her week with a 5-over 76 and tied for 11th at 14-over par. Shin also finished with a solid round of 2-over 73 and tied for 19th.
Freshman Olafia Kristinsdottir, in her first ACC Championship, had rounds of 78-79-81 to finish tied for 30th. Senior Allie Bodemann also finished her career at the ACCs this weekend with rounds of 79-85-83.
The Wake Forest's women's golf team were to find out April 25 about receiving an at-large bid for the NCAA Regionals. Regional sites are being held in Daytona Beach, Fla., Notre Dame, Ind., and Seattle, Wash., on May 5-7. Last year, coming off their ACC title, the Deacons failed to make the top eight at the regionals and advance to the national tournament, something they don't want to happen this year.
"(We didn't win the team title this year) but this year I think we can flip it and finish in the top eight," Dailey said. We can use what happened to us last year and the lessons from the ACC -- where we could have been easily second. I think we're optimistic about the regionals and finishing strong."
Players Mentioned
