Birdwood Golf Course is set within the heart of Virginia, tucked into 500 acres of wooded hills just west of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Within those hills, in the sticky heat of a late Southern June, two of the game's most promising amateurs squared off. University pride was on the line – the most precious currency college golfers have to risk.

The contest was simple. Make the fewest putts, you win.

The wager?

A simple shirt – colored in Cavalier orange and navy – must be worn on Sunday of the United States Women's Open at Blackwolf Run in Kohler, Wisc.

Jenny Chuasiriporn laughed.

No way. No self-respecting Duke Blue Devil would ever agree to that.

Alright. The ball, then. A Dukie would have to knock around a Titlelist emblazoned with "VIRGINIA" in blue letters on championship Sunday

That was more like it.

Those Virginia balls found the hole, and Lewis Chitengwa won the bet.

The native Zimbabwean's smile was more magical than his golf swing, a mechanic so smooth it beat Tiger Woods head-to-head in a junior tournament and allowed him to become the first black player to win South African Open.

Chitengwa was destined for something more – something historic – but golf is about the moment, and in that moment, there was nothing like watching a dozen UVA logo's get stuffed into a Duke bag.

That magical smile was flashed in that June heat, and perhaps a little pixie dust went along with those golf balls a week later when Chuasiriporn honored the wager, and teed them up at the 1998 U.S. Women's Open.

No doubt that smile beamed across the country when Chuasiriporn rolled in a 45-foot birdie putt just ahead of a finishing Se Ri Pak, sabres and all.

"That was the ball that was used when I made the putt," she said.

Thing was, Pak missed her par putt minutes later, forcing a Monday playoff. Eighteen more holes, at least, to decide a winner.

How much magic was left?

"I remember that I could not lose that ball after Sunday's round, that's for sure," said Jenny's younger brother Joey in an email interview. He was her caddie for the week. "That definitely brought her some luck. A Duke player relying on UVA – that was not normal."

Jenny Chuasiriporn, the 20-year-old senior-to-be, was on fire early in the playoff and took a four-shot lead. As the round wore on however, Pak closed the gap, leading up to yet another showdown on the 18th green. Pak got up and down from the water, Chuasiriporn could not from off the green.

On to the 10th, the 91st hole of golf played that week.

Jenny turned to her brother.

"OK, give me a Virginia ball."

The reply was unexpected.

"Uh, we're out – I don't have any more."

Jenny couldn't believe it.

"I feel like that was when my luck started to run out," she said. "Then we played the 10th and 11th hole and that was when she won."

Fourteen years later, Chuasiriporn is back in Virginia, though the clubs are long since stashed away.

To say the magic she captured those two weeks in 1998 has faded would be shortsighted. Working in the Virginia Commonwealth University cardiac surgery intensive care unit in Richmond, Va., one should recognize those two weeks set her on a far more important, tangible path – but one where that pixie dust sprinkled about in Charlottesville still lingers.

"I love what I do and I think it was just as difficult, switching into a new career and walking into nursing school for the first day and walking into a patient's room," she said. "Some days I think that was more difficult than anything I ever did in golf because it was just a totally new challenge and a new everything. I'm glad I did it now because I think this is way more natural for me to do and I think that for sure is what my heart tells me to do."

Giving up golf about a decade ago was hard, yet it wasn't. Golf was what she was supposed to do, but she quickly realized it wasn't what she was meant to do.

While Chuasiriporn struggled with where the game fit in her life, Chitengwa knew where it fit in his. He was playing on the Canadian Tour, and beginning to find himself as a pro with two top 10 finishes.

Then, in late June of 2001, he fell ill after the second round of the Edmonton Open. He withdrew from the tournament, but was initially dismissed from a hospital with flu-like symptoms. His condition deteriorated quickly and he was re-admitted, but a rare form of meningitis took his life at the age of 26.

"That part played a little bit into where I was, what I wanted to do to make myself happy," she said softly. "I'm just going through the motions and I don't really want to do this anymore. So I think that helped me along, too, to make sense of it."

Jenny acknowledges she thinks about what it would be like to be an Open champion, but there is joy in her voice, and she laughs often.

She doesn't miss the game, and considers 1998 the height of a career that not only etched her name in history – and in the hearts of all who watched – but had her inducted into the Duke Hall of Fame in 2011 alongside basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and former basketball player Bobby Hurley.

"I feel like everything happened for a reason," she said. "I realize that my life would have been so completely different. It was already different for finishing runner up, but it would have been even more different having won and the pressure to play well and to continue playing would have been ten times greater than the pressure I had finishing runner up.

"It took me a while to walk away just because I knew it was such a great talent that I had and I felt like I really should have been doing it, but at the end of the day I realized I wasn't really doing it for myself anymore and so that's ultimately why I ended up walking away from the game."

She completely gave up playing in 2003, but truly stopped long before.

"I know I went through the motions for a number of months, years probably," she admitted. "I didn't feel it in my heart."

Chuasiriporn transitioned out of the game by coaching – at UVA no less – but found herself pulled toward something more, something greater.

Only her destiny led her out of the spotlight, which suited her perfectly.

"I don't even like talking about myself, I don't like sitting at the center of a table," she said. "I like to sit back and listen to people and I like to give of myself. I think that's why nursing has been more natural to me."

Chuasiriporn has talked infrequently about the tournament in 1998, but on this rare occasion of its return to Blackwolf Run, she allowed herself a select few interviews. She hopes, however, that her reclusiveness isn't perceived as bitterness.

"I guess I could sense other people were thinking 'I hope she's happy, I hope she's doing what she wants to do since she didn't play well in professional golf,'" she admitted.

"I think my close friends and family know that I'm really happy and can see that it's pretty natural for me. I think if people that know me know – I don't know if this sounds weird – but I'm just more of an inner-connected person. I like being around people, I like giving back or helping people, and I think playing golf didn't fit my personality. You just have to think about me, me, me, me and what you need to do to win. It was a very self-centered world and that is like the furthest thing from my personality."

Once she left the game, she left for good. Her U.S. Women's Open clubs are at her parent's house in Maryland, as is her journal that she kept tournament week. She hasn't touched either, or even tried watching the tournament over the last decade.

"It was probably shortly after the Open," she said of her last attempt at revisiting history. "One of my good friends just started playing it and got to about the sixth hole in the playoff round and I was like 'I can't even watch it, I don't even want to watch it.'"

She laughed.

"Ever since then I haven't even watched it. I think I have in my hands now a DVD but I still haven't turned it on. I don't know why."

Her brother, now a product manager for TaylorMade-Adidas in Asia, has an idea, though.

"I have tried to watch the tournament and highlights in front of her before, but I know it's hard for my sister to watch because she was so close to making history of her own," he said. "I think that tournament not only signifies the pinnacle of her career, but may also remind her of the connection she shared with close friends at that time."

He then mentions Chitengwa.

"Maybe he is the reminder that lives on in those lucky UVA golf balls."

It's hot in Richmond this first week of July, with temperatures hitting 100 degrees. There's a chance of rain, too, bringing in that sticky Southern heat. Jenny says she plans on watching the U.S. Women's Open return to Blackwolf, but allows a caveat – if there isn't too much soccer on the DVR.

She laughs again.

One day she does want to return to Blackwolf Run to walk the golf course again, to feel the grass beneath her feet and perhaps that little bit of pixie dust that surely remains.