The Duke men's tennis team got few spring breaks during one of their busiest weeks of the season.
While most of the campus was vacationing far away, the tennis team played five matches in six days, winning three and dropping two. After beginning the week by trouncing Florida last Sunday, the Blue Devils were upset by Florida State Monday. From there, Duke traveled to Montgomery, Alabama for the Big 10 Tires Blue-Gray Classic where they sandwiched wins over Texas and Virginia Commonwealth around a loss to Kansas.
It appeared that the 11th-ranked Blue Devils would have a great week when they throttled no. 12 Florida 6-1 on Sunday. Duke won five out of six singles matches, the only loss coming from No. 1 seed senior Rob Chess, playing with a pulled calf muscle, 6-3, 6-0. The Blue Devils then wrapped up the doubles point after Chess and senior Peter Ayers, playing No. 1, and junior Sven Koehler and freshman Dmitry Muzyka, playing No. 2, each won 8-6.
"We started out really strong," Duke head coach Jay Lapidus said.
Things took a turn for the worse on Monday, however. Duke lost only its second ACC match in three years when the team fell to Florida State 4-3. Lousy weather and player illness contributed significantly to the Blue Devils' demise.
"It was one thing after another," Lapidus said. "It was one of those matches where everything that could go wrong went wrong."
Among the things that went wrong was a migraine headache Ayers contracted during Monday's match against FSU. Playing in the number three singles spot, Ayers was upended by the Seminoles' Scott Schuhriemen 3-6, 6-3, 6-1. Ayers and Chess, the fifth-ranked doubles team in the nation, also fell 8-4 to Florida State's Jason White and J.P. Vissepo. Chess noted that the 45-degree weather was a factor in the match.
On Thursday, the Blue Devils bounced back with its first win over the University of Texas in school history. The team defeated UT by 4-1 margin in the Blue-Gray Classic. Ayers and Chess both recovered nicely from Monday's troubles. After they combined to knock off 17th-ranked E.J. Stearns and Mark Loughlin 8-4 in doubles, each tallied singles wins to lead Duke to victory.
The Blue Devils sealed the victory when junior Adam Gusky scored a solid 6-2, 6-4 victory at No. 5 singles position. Gusky, who has battled various injuries throughout his Duke career, had an excellent week, tallying wins in four out of five matches.
Gusky's only defeat over spring break came in Friday's match against 16th-ranked Kansas, a 4-2 loss for the Blue Devils. Although Chess, the No. 5 singles player in the nation, and Koehler played strong games, the Jayhawks rode the wave of three straight singles victories to defeat Duke.
The Blue Devils finished the week on a dramatic note. Playing Virginia Commonwealth on Friday night in their final match of the Blue-Gray Classic, the team appeared to have its back against the wall. Having already lost three singles matches, it appeared that the Blue Devils would fall yet again. Koehler was down 5-2 in the third set of his match. A Koehler loss would mean the clinching fourth point for VCU.
"The other guy had a huge serve," Lapidus said. "I had resigned myself to losing the match."
Koehler, however, had not yet written off the match. The junior from Hong Kong stormed back, breaking his opponent's serve three times en route to a 7-5 victory in the third set. Koehler recorded an incredible 6-1, 6-7, 7-5 triumph to keep Duke alive.
Duke rode the wave of Koehler's comeback into doubles play. Chess and Ayers recorded an 8-6 victory at the number one position, followed by Koehler and Muzyka's 8-6 win to seal up the doubles point and put away Virginia Commonwealth 4-3.
"Everyone was fighting just as hard even though we lost a couple of matches," Chess said. "We could have packed it in."
Lapidus said he hopes that the victory over Virginia Commonwealth will be a defining moment for this year's team, especially given the emotional turbulence of the previous week.
"It was a great way to finish," Lapidus said.
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