Is Duke a tennis school?
Yes, in the long term.
Short term?
After spending most of the past weekend at Duke’s Ambler Center, I can give an equivocal maybe, one two-thumbs-up and one how-did-that-happen.
Some background. Duke’s men’s tennis program has been pretty successful in recent years. They’ve made the NCAA Tournament 12 times in the last 14 tournaments--excluding 2020, of course. But going into this season they hadn’t advanced past the second round since 2015. That was the last time they were a (top-16) host. Duke has made it to the quarterfinals eight times but is 0-8 in quarterfinal matches.
Contrast that with the women’s program. They won the NCAA title in 2009 and have advanced to 11 final fours, including last season, when Duke was a silly centimeter away from playing for the national title.
Duke’s women returned most of the roster from last season, including Chloe Beck, a top-10 talent. Plus they added grad-student transfer Cameron Morra, the top player from UNC.
So, it was no surprise that the women were ranked high all season. But they never quite seemed like a title team. Not all of the newcomers performed to expectations. Morra battled back and ankle injuries, while Georgia Drummy also had back issues. Duke got smoked by UNC 4-1 and were upset by Georgia Tech 4-3 in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals. Beck missed the ACC Tournament to play in a professional tournament and would have been back had Duke beaten the Yellow Jackets.
Still, a strange dynamic.
Despite the loss Duke was seeded sixth nationally and picked to host. It marked Duke’s 33rd consecutive NCAA Tournament bid.
And they had company. Led by senior Garrett Johns and precocious freshman Pedro Rodenas--he’s from Madrid--Duke bumped off every ACC rival expect Virginia--more on that later—and garnered a 12 seed.
Double hosting. Duke finessed it by having the women play Friday and Saturday and the men Saturday and Sunday.
A brief sidebar for those of you who don’t follow college tennis. The teams start with three doubles matches, simultaneous action, a single set. But you only get one point. The team that wins two doubles matches first gets that one point.
But that’s a big point. The match follows with six singles matches, best two of three sets. Trust me, if you’ve never tried to follow six matches at once, it is a hoot. Just don’t try it with a sore neck.
But I digress. The team that wins the doubles point has to win three of those six matches to reach the magic number of four. The team that loses the doubles point has to win four.
It started out well. Duke’s women had little trouble with William and Mary Friday, winning or leading every match.
On to Friday. UNC-Wilmington made the Duke men work but the outcome never was really in doubt.
Then the women took on UCLA, first-round winners over Texas Tech.
Morra was ruled out, a bad ankle the culprit. She was Duke’s second-ranked player and losing her meant that everyone except Beck had to move up a slot.
Duke won a hard-fought doubles point and seemed poised to get to four when sixth-ranked Beck on court one and Emma Jackson on court three won in straight sets.
Duke never got to four. On court two Drummy jumped to a 4-1 lead in the opening set against Kimmi Hance. Then the wheels came off. Hance won the next five games.
College tennis has another wrinkle. At 40-40, the next point wins. Drummy and Hance had nine so-called deuce points in the second set and Hance won seven and the set and the match.
But it looked good on court on court six. Princeton transfer Brianna Shvets won the first set 6-0 against Christine Lutkemeyer and jumped to a 3-0 lead in the second. She served for the second set at 5-4 and 6-5 but was broken both times. She jumped to a 5-2 lead in the tiebreaker but couldn’t hold that lead either.
Then she needed medical attention, apparently for a cramp. She made aggressive decision after aggressive decision in the third set, apparently trying to shorten points. Lutkemeyer won the final four games to take the decisive set 6-3.
That left court five, Duke’s Luliia Bryzgalova --another grad transfer, from Penn-against Sasha Vagramov.
Bryzgalova led the first set 6-5 but couldn’t close the deal. She had an early mini-break in the tiebreaker but lost 7-3. Bryzgalova led the second set 2-0 and 4-2 but again it went to a tiebreaker. Bryzgalova led 3-0 in the tiebreaker but again Duke couldn’t finish and Vagramov’s 8-6 win ended Duke’s season.
You probably detected a trend. Duke coach Jamie Ashworth conceded that UCLA simply played the big points better than Duke.
“I thought once we got through doubles, because we kind of saved ourselves with the doubles there. We scrapped that out. I thought that we could gain a little momentum there, but yeah that's exactly what happened. When it came down to the deuce points or the tiebreakers. I think we were 0-3 in tiebreakers and even other matches were up some sets and up some points and games and they just they just put it better job than we did.”
Ashworth refused to use Morra’s absence as an excuse.
“Any time we’ve been in that situation this year, we have really good players. So, it’s definitely not an excuse. We trust who we have on the court.”
Of course, there’s some coach-speak there. A healthy Morra probably results in a Duke win. But seasons are long, injuries happen and depth matters.
“We gave ourselves opportunities,” Ashworth summed up. “We just didn’t play well when we got those opportunities.”
Twenty-four wins, five losses and lots of what-might-have-beens.
This one stings.
The season isn’t over for Beck, Drummy and Jackson, who will participate in singles competition later this month in Orlando.
By comparison the Duke men had a relatively drama-free weekend. Cornell upset Auburn in the first round but one upset was their ceiling. Duke won the doubles point and two singles matches in straight sets. Junior Faris Khan put Duke over the top with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 win over Cornell’s Samuel Paquette.
The other two matches were even at a set apiece and were not completed. The final was 4-1.
“It feels great,’ Smith said. “I'm really proud of our guys. That was a very tough college tennis match. I know we won 4-1, but I give so much credit to Cornell for how hard they fought. We saw them compete yesterday and we saw how tough they were, and they brought that again today. It took all we had to push through and I'm really proud of the guys.”
Survive and advance. That’s the good news. The bad news? Duke plays fifth-seeded Virginia next and the Cavaliers have been the ACC’s 800-pound gorilla in recent years. They’ve won five of the last 11 NCAA titles, including 2022 and blitzed the ACC this season, an undefeated ACC regular-season and a 4-1 win over Duke in the ACC Tournament title match. Virginia also handed Duke its only ACC regular-season loss, 7-0. [Teams frequently finish every match in the regular season so players can earn points for post-season rankings.]
But four of the six singles matches in the ACC Tournament went into the third set, which suggests that a little improvement on Duke’s part and perhaps some slippage on Virginia’s part and a Duke win is not out of the question.
That match is at Virginia, of course, Saturday at 1 P.M.
Love the tennis coverage!
I caught parts of both 2nd round matches on the excellent Cracked Racquets youtube stream, which, for any tennis fans, is a great way to watch college matches. https://www.youtube.com/@CrackedRacquets
The women's loss to UCLA was gut-wrenching, and Jamie has his work cut out for him to avoid what could be a bad hangover effect. This team was built for a deep run.
Now if the men can just find some mojo against UVA.