Duke star says pros can wait

Plenty of attention has been paid, and rightly so, to Tyler Hansbrough’s uncommon decision to expend the full four years of his eligibility at North Carolina. Hansbrough apparently likes playing NCAA basketball, enjoys his Tar Heel teammates and coaches, and values attending a university.

Even more anomalous, despite a wealth of collegiate honors and acclaim, Hansbrough has deferred the opportunity to get rich quick as a professional athlete.

The UNC star is not alone in his attitude, achievement, or choices. Just down the road in Durham, another national player of the year and multiple All-America has taken a similar if less celebrated path.

Duke women’s golfer Amanda Blumenherst is every bit as accomplished in her sport as is Hansbrough in his, with a comparably promising pro career just over the horizon.

Starting today at Athens, Ga., Blumenherst leads Duke in its quest for a fourth consecutive NCAA championship. Blumenherst is a three-time Division I player of the year, three-time All-America, three-time ACC champion, and a two-time academic All-America. Earlier this week she became the first repeat winner of the Nancy Lopez Award, established in 2000 to recognize the most outstanding women’s amateur golfer.

In other words, Amanda Blumenherst is a rare and dominating player.

Dan Brooks, her coach at Duke, lauds his star’s positive attitude, work ethic, and enjoyment of the process of learning. Most of all, he cites Blumenherst’s desire, her will, as what sets her apart.

“She’s just a model,” said Brooks, whose teams have won five NCAA titles, 15 ACC championships (including the last 13 in a row), and produced 19 All-Americas in his 24 seasons at Durham. “She has extremely strong desire. That’s the root of everything. Desire to live life to its fullest. Every day, she’s going to expend herself, get the most out of what she’s doing.”

Blumenherst grew up immersed in the sport of golf. Her grandfather, aunt, and uncle are golf pros. Her father, Dave Blumenherst, played golf in college. “Everybody in my family knows how to play golf, from my 5-year-old cousin to my great grandma,” she said of a clan whose roots are planted in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Born and largely raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, Blumenherst took up the sport at age four. Led into the backyard by her mother, Amy Blumenherst, she was urged to whack golf balls as far as she could. Hit past a park bench, for instance, and the oldest of three children might win the pajamas of her choice. ("She should have had me on a putting green more," Blumenherst said with wistful amusement.)

That early encouragement had an enduring impact. Blumenherst’s interest in the game was piqued, and to this day she considers one of her greatest golfing assets her ball-striking, “from off the tee to my wedges.”

Blumenherst also is physically strong at 5-9, has a very simple swing, and possesses a capacity to maintain her poise in the face of the game’s inevitable frustrations. While she conceded that “mentally, maybe, I’ve thought about throwing a club,” she does not kick the turf, swear, or otherwise permit outbursts of what Brooks called the competitive “rage” burning within.

“A lot has to just do with being mentally tough, because golf is not a game of perfect and you have to be able to accept that and get one shot at a time,” said Blumenherst , whose 70.67 stroke average is best ever at Duke, surpassing the 71.00 mark she set last year. “You’re frustrated with the swing, or a bad shot, you can’t let it get to you. You just have to work through it and stay positive.”

Given her enjoyment of golf, and her success, Blumenherst harbors realistic pro aspirations. Yet she is in no hurry to cash in. “I just love college too much,” she said.

Brooks said he and Blumenherst, now completing her junior year, have been asked “hundreds of times” whether she would turn pro early.

“She’s not going to limit herself to one aspect of life,” the coach said. “She’s going to have a very full life. The one-dimensionality of golf won’t do it for her. She’s going to get her degree, and she’s going to be one of the best players out there.”

Blumenherst, an attentive listener with a ready laugh, is a self-professed “dork.” She likes school, likes attending class, and, most improbably, likes to read. Blumenherst narrowed her choice of schools to Duke or Stanford because she said she sought an “academically challenging” situation with a superior golf program.

Blumenherst grew up playing with a gaggle of other young women who skipped all or part of college to pursue an LPGA career: Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Julieta Granada, Brittany Lang (a two-year Duke player), Angela and Jane Park. She insisted that watching former compatriots perform as pros does not fill her with envy or impatience, as might be expected.

A realist, she knows her time will come soon enough.

“They’re doing well out there, but (college) is only four years,” the European history major said on a day she had to write a 25-page paper on childhood in the Middle Ages. “I feel a little sorry for them, that they’re missing out quite a bit on something that, you can’t put a price tag on it.”