CHAPEL HILL--It wasn't easy. It definitely wasn't pretty. But the women's tennis team rebounded from a weekend loss by defeating No. 25 Tennessee at the UNC Cone-Kenfield Tennis Center on Thursday. Sixth-ranked Duke (4-1) downed the Volunteers 6-3.
"[Tennessee is] an extremely hard-hitting team," Duke head coach Jody Hyden said. "They hit the ball as hard as any team in the country, and indoors they're even better. We were ready for them."
Senior Monica Mraz, who is ranked No. 6 in the country, was handily beaten at the first position. Volunteer freshman Margie Lepsi took little time in disposing of Mraz, 6-1, 6-3. Lepsi is ranked No. 7 in the nation and showed little fault in her game.
"[Lepsi] has been beating a lot of top players," Hyden said. "She didn't miss today. Monica was on the defensive the whole time."
"She definitely outplayed me," Mraz said. "She was really on today. She swung hard at everything. She really deserved to win. This is a big sobering-up for me."
Although Mraz went down at the top spot, her teammates worked to pick up the slack. Senior Wendy Lyons scored a key victory at the No. 2 slot over Tennessee's Melissa Zimpfer, who is ranked No. 22 in the nation. The 27th-ranked Blue Devil defeated Zimpfer, 6-3, 6-4.
Duke scored another big win at the No. 3 position. Freshman Laura Zifer was victorious in a three-set match over Volunteer Manisha Mal-hotra, 6-2, 4-6, 6-0. Tennessee gathered its second point, however, when another three-set battle went the other way, as Kristin Bachochin defeated Duke's Wendy Fix.
Sophomore Karen O'Sull-ivan finished a quick 7-5, 6-3 win at No. 4 over Volunteer Emily Fisher. The only other Duke singles victory of the day came from freshman Ellen McCance, who defeated Erin Lowrey, 6-3, 6-1, at the sixth position.
The Blue Devils took a 4-2 lead into the doubles matches, needing only one more point to pull out the win. And the match was soon clinched by Fix and Zifer at the No. 3 doubles slot as they handed a 6-3, 7-5 defeat to Volunteers Tu Mai and Bachochin.
Freshman Luanne Spadea saw action in her first dual match of the year, teaming up with O'Sullivan to play at No. 2 doubles. Spadea has been out with a thyroid problem and has not yet completely recovered. Her movement was still a little slow, and she will not return to the singles lineup for another three weeks.
"That was the first doubles match [Spadea] played since September," Hyden said. "All I wanted her to do was get in the match, win or lose. We wanted to get her back in with the team. She'll get better."
The final match of the evening was a long three-setter at No. 1 doubles. Mraz and Lyons teamed up against Tennessee's Zimpfer and Malhotra, who as a team are ranked No. 26 in the country. The match went back and forth, with many momentum swings.
The Duke duo dropped the first set 6-4 but battled back to an unchallenged 6-0 second set. The Volunteers, however, weren't going down easy. After several breaks of serve in the final set, Zimpfer and Malhotra came back to force a tiebreaker, which the Blue Devils won 7-4.
"We didn't play well at the beginning," Mraz said of the doubles match. "We came out a little bit weak--that's been our problem of late. I'm just happy that we pulled it out. It's always nice to win 7-6 in the third."
Duke will take on No. 20 Brigham Young today at 4 p.m. The match will again be played in Chapel Hill.
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