The Duke men's tennis team notched two home wins over the weekend, picking up some momentum for the heart of the spring season. The No. 9 Blue Devils knocked off a pesky Notre Dame team 5-2 on Saturday, and followed that up with a 7-0 pounding of Georgia Tech on Sunday. Duke (9-4, 2-1 ACC) has now won four straight matches since spring break.
The Blue Devils got into trouble early against Notre Dame. Duke has struggled all year to find a winning combination at No. 3 doubles, and again they faltered there when Jordan Wile and Adam Gusky were upended 8-3 by the Fighting Irish's Ryan Simme and John Jay O'Brien. Shortly afterward, Duke's Sven Koehler and Dmitry Muzyka, the No. 15 doubles team in the country, were upset 8-6 by Jakub Pietrowski and Brian Patterson to clinch the doubles point for Notre Dame.
Things started out just as badly for the Blue Devils in singles. Muzyka, Koehler and Gusky all lost the first set of their respective matches, putting Duke in a deep hole against the Fighting Irish. Furthermore, senior Rob Chess, ranked No. 4 nationally in singles, was locked up in a tiebreaker in the first set of his match.
"I was concerned," Duke head coach Jay Lapidus said. "We didn't look good in doubles and we started out a little lethargic in singles."
The Blue Devils quickly turned things around. Chess won his tiebreaker decisively, rocketing an ace past opponent Mike Sprouse on set point. In the meantime, Muzyka, Koehler and Gusky all came back to win their second sets. At the other end of the stadium, Wile, playing at No. 6, quickly put away Jason Pun of Note Dame 6-2, 6-4 to score the first point of the day for Duke.
The rest of the singles matches remained close, however. Senior Peter Ayers, playing in the fourth spot, split his first two sets, leaving the overall outcome of the match in doubt. Duke persevered, and the momentum swung back in the Blue Devils' favor when Muzyka, playing No. 2 singles, and Chess won their matches to put Duke up 3-1. The win was clinched when Gusky defeated O'Brien 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the fifth singles slot.
"It was a match [where] we could have just folded up the tents and gone home," Lapidus said. "Basically, we just outfought them.... It was nice to see."
There was little fighting involved in Sunday's match against Georgia Tech. Duke held a clinic at the expense of the Yellow Jackets, blanking them 7-0 without losing a set.
In doubles, Chess and Ayers, the sixth-ranked team in the country, put away Yellow Jackets Matt Lee and B.J. Traub 8-4 to open play for the Blue Devils. Gusky and Wile followed with an 8-3 victory at No. 3, and Koehler and Muzyka completed the doubles sweep with an 8-3 win as well.
The carnage continued in singles, where every Duke player won easily. Some of the more lopsided matches included Muzyka's 6-1, 6-3 victory at No. 2 singles and Koehler's 6-0, 6-1 romp at No. 3.
"I'm just happy about the way we stayed focused," Lapidus said. "We didn't let up at all. It's easy to let up on your concentration and let them back into some matches, and we didn't do that."
Lapidus also used the Georgia Tech match as an opportunity to give little-used sophomore Ramin Pejan a shot at singles. Lapidus removed Gusky from his usual spot in the singles lineup to rest his ailing back, and Pejan stepped in and cruised 6-1, 6-4 over Rob Rawlings in the No. 6 spot.
"Ramin has been such a great kid, and he's been working so hard," Lapidus said. "This was a good chance to get him a match."
Lapidus was pleased with the way his team played, despite the lack of competition that Georgia Tech offered.
"It's nice to have a match like that," Lapidus said. "Our schedule has been so hard this year, almost every match has been a nail-biter.... It was good for us."
The men's tennis team will next face South Carolina at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Duke Tennis Stadium.
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