Although few people seem to know it, the Duke tennis program could very well be the strongest collegiate tennis program in the country.
For proof, just take a look at the numbers. The women's team is ranked fourth in the country with a 21-2 record, while the men are ranked fifth and boast a 23-4 mark. Duke is the only school with both teams ranked in the top-five nationally.
The only two losses for the women's team have come to top-ranked Florida, most recently by a 5-4 margin at Gainesville, Fla., on April 3, while the men have fallen to only the No. 1, No. 3, No. 4 and No. 8 teams this season.
Even more impressive are their results in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The women have won 46 straight ACC matches, while the men just completed an undefeated ACC campaign in which only one opponent (Virginia) took even two points against them.
And last weekend, both teams traveled to Charlotte to take part in the ACC Tournament, which might just as well have been called the Duke Tournament because of the complete Blue Devil domination of the event.
The women won their sixth straight title by defeating Clemson 5-2 in the finals, while the men took the championship with a 5-1 win over hated rival North Carolina.
This season marked the second time in three years that Duke has swept the titles. Both finals were played at the same time and the same site, and appropriately enough, both titles were clinched within minutes of each other.
Duke's Peter Ayers clinched his team's match with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over UNC's Sean Steinour to give Duke its fourth point, while Julie Exum and Monica Mraz clinched the women's title 15 minutes later with a 6-1, 6-0 doubles victory about 30 yards away.
"Both programs are really proud to be this good," third-year women's head coach Geoff Macdonald said after Sunday's match. "I think we feed off each other in a good way. If [the men] win, we're right there with them and vice versa. If our matches were going on and they had finished early, they'd have been up [watching us], and vice versa. It's a good situation between the men and the women."
Tennis at Duke has not always been this successful. The women have been a top-25 team for several years, but only recently have the Blue Devils become a national powerhouse. Duke ended the 1990-91 season ranked seventh, its first top-10 finish. Last year's team then jumped to No. 4, and this year Duke has a valid claim for the second or third seed in the NCAA Tournament. Losing to Florida is nothing to be ashamed of, and Duke has done away with many other top-25 programs this season with ease.
The men's rise to prominence has been even more impressive. Third-year head coach Jay Lapidus put Duke on the map with a No. 25 final ranking in 1990-91. Last season, Duke finished at No. 13 in the country, and now the Blue Devils have their first-ever top-five ranking.
"It's always nice [to sweep ACC titles]," Lapidus said. "It shows where our program is. We're the only team in the country with both teams in the top-five. It's pretty exciting."
Still, both squads have competed in relative obscurity.
The teams garnered sparse crowds for home matches this season despite the fact that neither one lost a dual match on the West Campus Tennis Courts. Some of the best tennis in the country is played at Duke, but few people come to check it out.
It is true that few Duke sports outside of men's basketball get a great deal of enthusiastic support at home events. Tennis, though, is a popular sport for participation here at Duke, so it is surprising that more people do not go out and watch these national championship contenders.
It is too late to go out and see the teams this year, though, because only the NCAA Tournament remains for them.
The women were dropped in the national semifinals last season, and this year they will travel to Gainesville, Fla., May 12-20, with the team goal aimed at taking home the title.
"We're just going to go back and take a little time off because we're all really tired and probably a little sore," Exum said Sunday. "Then we'll really gear up and practice hard and we're looking to take [the NCAAs] this year."
Macdonald wants to enjoy winning the ACC title for a little while before looking ahead to next month's season climax.
"We have a long year, maybe the longest in college sports," Macdonald said. "We practice from the beginning of September and we just go on and on and on, and [the ACC title] is our reward . . . We have to just savor this for a couple days, and then we're going to just try to go for [the NCAAs] and win it."
The men will go into the NCAAs, held May 14-23 in Athens, Ga., with a similar attitude, although they are not as highly favored as the women. UCLA, USC, Georgia, and Mississippi State are the teams ranked ahead of Duke, and three of those teams defeated the Blue Devils this season. Still, those matches were close, and this is the first time the Blue Devils have ever had a realistic shot at taking the title. They will not let it pass by easily.
"As a team, we're almost unstoppable," sophomore Chris Pressley said. "We've got great team chemistry right now. All the guys are playing well. We can do some great things."
And it's not out of the realm of possibility that, when the fall semester begins, one or two new national championship trophies may have already found their way back to Durham.
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