CHAPEL HILL -- A gorgeous spring-like Sunday caused lots of Dukies to go outside, but the men's tennis team stayed indoors in preparation for this week's National Team Indoors.
The Chapel Hill Tennis Club was the site where the Blue Devils continued to assert their power on the collegiate tennis scene. Duke, ranked No. 4 in the nation, solidly defeated the Virginia Tech Hokies 6-1. The only loss for the team came at the No. 1 singles position.
Starting off the domination for Duke were the three doubles teams. Playing at No. 1 was the team of sophomores Peter Ayers and Rob Chess who defeated Oliver Mago and Andrew Krafft 8-6. Junior Chris Pressley and sophomore Jordan Murray were also victorious over Hokies Miki Pusztai and Chad Tolerteick at the No. 2 spot. Freshmen Sven Koehler and Adam Gusky made a strong appearance at No. 3 with an 8-6 win over Chris Imensek and Adam Gottfried.
The singles side saw a few changes and an upset at the No. 1 position. Virginia Tech's Mago quickly took care of Ayers, 6-1, 6-2. Ayers, ranked 45th in the nation, dropped five straight games before he was even able to take a game from Mago. He never got back into the match after that.
"Every athlete goes through one of those days," head coach Jay Lapidus said. "[Mago] played really well. [Peter] wasn't quite there today. You just want to try to forget about it. [Peter] has always started out the season a little bit slow, but then once he gets going he's hard to stop. He'll get it going."
Aside from the loss at the No. 1 position, the Blue Devils had little trouble stopping the Hokies. Chess, ranked 33rd in the nation, played Imensek at the No. 2 position, and won 6-4, 6-4. After the match, Chess put ice on his shoulder, but Lapidus was not worried about an injury.
"[Rob's] shoulder is a little bit sore, but [the ice] was mostly preventative," Lapidus said. "He had [some] soreness yesterday, but he's fine."
Gusky played in his first match of the spring season at the No. 3 position. He defeated Kraft, 6-4, 6-4. Even though he sprained his ankle in the fall, he played without any type of limp or apparent pain. He did, however, wear an air cast on his ankle while playing.
"[Adam's] moving well," Lapidus said. "[The air cast] is more of a security thing right now. I think he's ready to go, he's playing well."
As the No. 4 seed, Murray had few problems with Pusztai. He finished the Hokie off 6-4, 6-1. Koehler continued his outstanding play at No. 5 and put away Gottfried 6-4, 6-1. Junior Philippe Moggio saw time at the No. 6 singles slot and after a hard-fought first set, defeated Tolerteick, 7-6, 6-2.
The lineup was somewhat different from the one that the Blue Devils used to beat Furman last week, but Lapidus felt that a different lineup helped to give the freshmen some good competition.
"[I like to] move the lineup around a little bit," Lapidus said. "It's nice to have flexibility. For example, Sven Koehler got a lot of experience playing a little tougher competition today. It worked real well to move guys around a little bit. Some guys are so close you can flip-flop them. It's good to keep other teams guessing [about] what you are going to be doing, so they don't set a lineup against you. What we did today was more to get [the guys] some competition."
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