The men's tennis team will only be able to wonder what might have been.
This season, head coach Jay Lapidus fielded one of his strongest teams ever and looked to make a run in the NCAA tournament. The Blue Devils' hopes faded, however, after drawing undefeated and top-ranked Stanford in the first round of the team tournament. The Cardinal defeated Duke en route to a national championship, leaving Lapidus and the team to wonder how far they could have gotten if the Blue Devils hadn't received such an unlucky draw.
After the loss to Stanford, though, several Blue Devils proved that they had the ability to defeat some of the top players in the nation in individual competition.
Senior Chris Pressley advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA singles tournament--further than any other player in Duke history. In that quarterfinal match-up, No. 15 Pressley was defeated by the nation's top player, Sargis Sargsian, 2-6, 6-2, 6-2.
"Chris was serving really well in the first set," Lapidus said. "He just seemed to lose his concentration a little bit early in the second set. Then [Sargsian] broke Chris and got rolling. Once he got rolling, it was hard for Chris to turn him off."
True to his top seeding in the tournament, the Arizona State senior swept the rest of his matches to capture the singles title.
"I think [Sargsian] was clearly the best player in the tournament," Lapidus said. "For Chris to win that match, he would have had to stay really well focused at the beginning of the second set and just hope that [Sargsian] just kept playing at a subpar level. But [Sargsian] just picked up his level and he played too well."
Before Pressley was defeated, however, he had considerable success in the tournament. From a field of 64, Pressley defeated three other opponents in his run through the NCAAs.
Among these opponents were No. 59 Ross Loel of Minnesota, No. 96 Andrew Rueb of Harvard and Kansas' Enrique Abaroa. Although Pressley took three sets to finish off his first-round match-up with Loel, he regained his form and gave Reub little room for hope in a 6-2, 7-5 victory.
"Chris was having trouble getting a rhythm in that match," Lapidus said of the Pressley-Loel match. "[Loel] was a tough match-up for Chris because he was a real good serve-and-volleyer. Points were very short. It's always tough when you're trying to get your nerves out."
With this tournament, Pressley's outstanding Duke career comes to an end. He has rewritten many school records, and looks to carry that success to the next level. Pressley finished the year with a 21-8 singles record and became Duke's only three-time All-American.
Junior Rob Chess also competed in singles, scoring a first-round victory over Princeton's Reed Cordish, 6-3, 6-2. Chess fell in the second round to Miami's Srdan Muskatirovic, however. Muskatirovic was able to break the Blue Devil's normally reliable hard serve to take the first set, 6-4. Chess hung on in the second set to force a tiebreaker, but could not come through with a victory.
"They were holding serve pretty much all the way through [the second set]," Lapidus said. "It was really a dead-even match. [Muskatirovic] is another guy that's been ranked as high as No. 1 in the country. Rob really hung with him. I thought he had a good chance to win it."
Even though Chess made an early exit from the singles competition, he and fellow junior Peter Ayers captured key victories in the doubles competition. The duo notched a first-round win over a team from Pepperdine. Ayers and Chess also advanced further than any other Duke doubles team in NCAA play, reaching the quarterfinals with a 7-6, 6-4 win over Ashley Fisher and Jason Weir-Smith of Texas Christian.
That win left Duke to face an opponent it knew all too well--Paul Goldstein and Scott Humphries of Stanford. A week earlier, No. 14 Ayers and Chess defeated the Cardinal duo when the two teams faced each other in match play on May 13.
On Saturday, though, Ayers and Chess could not pull out another win over the Stanford pair. The duo took little time in downing the Blue Devils, 6-3, 6-2.
"It was really windy that day," Lapidus said. "Rob and Pete rely a lot on their serves. Their serves were sort of stifled by the wind. It was probably one of the worst matches they've played all year. It was really unfortunate."
Even though the Blue Devils did not come home with any championship trophies, they did earn several honors that will not soon be forgotten. All three of the players in individual competition--Pressley, Chess and Ayers--received All-America honors, breaking a school record for most All-Americans in one year.
"To have three All-Americans is great," Lapidus said. "It's nice for the individuals to do well. Obviously the real priority is to try to do well as a team. But it does help a little bit, to show people that on an individual level we're really strong also."
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