The Blue Devils held that Tiger with ease, but almost didn't scalp the Seminoles.
This weekend saw the women's tennis team (12-4 overall, 6-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference) convincingly defeat Clemson 7-2 but scrape together a come-from-behind 5-4 victory over Florida State at the West Campus Tennis Courts.
"These were two really big wins," senior Christine Neuman said. "To beat these much-improved teams is a big feat."
Clemson, the Blue Devils' closest ACC competition, was never in the match Saturday. The Blue Devils would come up short only at No. 2 and No. 4 singles in making the Tigers their 11th victim of the season. Wendy Lyons, Neuman and freshmen Karen O'Sullivan and Kim Schiff did not drop a set in winning their singles matches. Lyons teamed with Monica Mraz at the first doubles slot to lead a sweep of the doubles play, dominating Janice Durden and Boba Tzvetkova 6-1, 6-4.
"It's nice to beat [Clemson]," freshman Wendy Fix said. "They're a fighting team, and they always want to beat us. It feels good to come out on top."
Fix would not know how true those words would be until the following day, when she teamed with Schiff at No. 3 doubles to pull Duke to a dramatic victory over FSU (11-8, 6-2) in the final match of the afternoon. Clutch situations are nothing new, however, for this freshman tandem.
According to head coach Geoff Macdonald, yesterday's contest marked the third time in just over a month that Fix and Schiff have played the winning match against a top 25 team. Kentucky and Florida were the other two foes.
"It's amazing because they're freshmen," Macdonald said. "They're such opposites: Wendy is more extroverted and emotional, while Kim is more analytical. Often that difference makes for a good combination."
That match was just the finale in a day-long comeback in which Duke found itself down by one match on three separate occasions.
With the Blue Devils trailing 4-3 after dropping the first doubles match, Neuman and O'Sullivan rebounded from a grueling first set to dispose of the Seminoles' Jennifer Hyde and Lori Sowell 7-6, 6-1. The win capped off a personal 4-0 weekend series for Neuman.
Feeding off that momentum, Fix and Schiff put a first-set tiebreak loss behind them and stepped up their intensity a notch to defeat Ashley Delaney and Laura Randmaa 6-7, 6-2, 6-1. It was Fix's second three-set victory of the day, and the first set was the only one Schiff would lose the entire weekend.
"I'm just pleased we got through," Macdonald said. "FSU played better than most top 20 teams."
Needless to say, this pair of victories greatly boosts the confidence of the league-leading Blue Devils, as Clemson and Florida State will most likely represent the second and third seeds, respectively, in the fast-approaching ACC tournament.
"We've overachieved this season," Macdonald said. "This team has been showing an awful lot of courage, and has good staying power.
"It was a team goal to go into the tournament as the top seed, and we've done that. It's a coach's dream."
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