<p>Just when Erica Shepherd was finally starting to feel comfortable. Go figure.</p><p>The Center Grove graduate and proud self-proclaimed homebody had felt uneasy for much of her freshman year at Duke, but she was starting to find a rhythm, both on campus and on the golf course, as the defending NCAA champion Blue Devils were getting into the meat of their spring season.</p><p>Just a few days after Shepherd carded her team’s low round of the day, an even-par 71 in the final round of the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate on March 8, she and her teammates were hit with the news that Duke was pulling the plug on all sports for the rest of the academic year.</p><p>The announcement was particularly ill-timed for Shepherd, one of just three Blue Devils who was in the lineup for every competitive round the team played in 2019-20.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]<p>"It was definitely kind of heartbreaking for me," she said, "especially since I would say the first six months of my college career, I was super homesick and didn’t really enjoy it, to be honest — and I was finally starting to settle in and our team really grew close with the two short months we had in the spring season. I really started to love it and feel like I was at home in Durham, finally, so it kind of sucked to have it end when it did.</p><p>"But it really just put things in perspective, and you realize that golf isn’t everything, and I’m obviously glad to be back, because I love where I’m from."</p><p>Shepherd has been back home in Greenwood for the past few weeks now, finishing up her spring semester via online classes and trying to work on her game as much as she can. She was glad to be back on her home course, Dye’s Walk, and she’s looking to try building on the momentum that she felt she had going after her first (and only) two spring events.</p><p>In the first of those, the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge in Palos Verdes, California, the Blue Devils blitzed a field that included nine of the nation’s top 10 teams, shooting 5 under par and breaking the tournament’s team scoring record by nine strokes.</p><p>That win made it all that much harder for Duke coach Dan Brooks to be okay with the season being wiped out.</p><p>"It’s just really a sad thing," he said. "That win we had at Palos Verdes gives you an idea of how good we can be. That was a great win, and Jaravee Boonchant wasn’t in our lineup when we won that tournament. … We had great talent, and we had depth. But that’s just the way it goes."</p><p>Making it harder for Shepherd is the fact that for the first time that she can remember, she doesn’t know when her next tournament will be.</p><p>She was supposed to be going to Georgia this week to play in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur for the second time, but that event — held in conjunction with The Masters — has been postponed.</p><p>"It’s just kind of weird," Shepherd said. "I love golf, and I would play golf if I didn’t have a tournament for the rest of my life, but it’s just something weird — I always kind of look forward to what I have to prepare for next. … It’s just kind of an eerie feeling."</p><p>With everything up in the air, Shepherd is treating this time off like an extended offseason. She’ll no doubt have contact with her coaches and teammates, but as far as practicing, she’s back on her own.</p><p>Brooks, though, says that’s right in line with how he runs the show at Duke.</p><p>"These are very passionate, self-driven (players), every one of them," the coach said. "The idea of prescribing — we don’t even do that. The way I operate is to honor that passion and honor that independence, and then just help them every way that I can and respect them.</p><p>"Since I’m not with them, all we can do is just let them go."</p><p>Shepherd is confident enough in her ability to police her own development that she’s not worried about the extended hiatus. No matter when or where her next golf tournament might be, she’ll still be just as confident in her game as she’s ever been.</p><p>"Just getting comfortable on the course and getting comfortable scoring low again, I think that’s really all that I need," she said.</p><p>"When we come out in the fall or next summer, who knows? We’ll just see who did the most with what we were given."</p>
