The story of Sisyphus is of a man damned eternally to watch the efforts of his labor fail at what should be the pinnacle of his achievement. Unjustly punished by Zeus, Sisyphus was doomed for eternity to roll a gigantic rock up the hillside only to watch it roll back down, crushing him time and time again.
And then there's the Duke women's tennis team-Xeno's paradox in an adidas skirt-you can't get there from here and they can't get to a national title for the uncrossable distance roughly the length of the Florida trophy case. They're All-American girls with All-American achievements who keep pushing the bar of expectations higher and higher every year, only to watch what should be their Fosbury Flop over the top crumble into a limbo below. Every year the rock goes up, every year it rolls back down.
The Blue Devils got through Georgia. They got through Texas. And last year they even got through 10-time champion Stanford. But as cartoon convention warns, the last step is a doozy, and it's that last step, painted in Florida orange and blue, that they've yet to climb.
"It's frustrating because they are the only team I haven't beaten," said a visibly upset Vanessa Webb after last month's semi-final defeat. "Every other team we finally got, but we never got them."
Only once in 23 meetings has Duke triumphed, and even then it was a highly surprising 5-3 upset in Durham. Coach Andy Brandi's Gators have been the team to beat this decade and it's a mantle that, with the exception of '94, has barely been tarnished by the Blue Devils.
Then came this year, the year they were going to do it, the year Duke became the standard bearer in women's tennis and not the also-ran. The Blue Devils rolled for the high stakes all season long and in the end the dice left a particularly painful craps. Three times they led Florida and three times they watched the lead evaporate in a blur of top spin and yellow fuzz.
At the National Team Indoor Championships in February, the Blue Devils needed just one more point after taking a 4-3 lead in doubles. But both Duke's No. 2 and No. 3 teams fell just shy (8-6 and 9-7 respectively) of claiming the first major team title and a win that might have altered the rest of the season.
In round two, the nation's No. 1 and No. 2 teams split singles forcing Duke again to win in doubles. But in what would prove to be the last match of Duke's doubles-by-committee formula, the Blue Devils got crushed.
Then came the year's main event.
Duke had waited for it all year, so when it arrived it was more like following a script than starting a match. It was the neighborhood bully on his own turf versus
The semifinal match, which would prove to be one of the best in tournament history, remained in doubt for nearly two and a half hours. The Blue Devils seized a 2-1 lead and then watched as the bottom three matches all went to a third set.
Then a Stephanie Hazlett backhand ripped all the pages from the end of the storybook season.
The Gators' No. 4 seed blasted a backhand down the line past an outstretched Karen Goldstein to go up 7-6 in the third set tiebreak. The crowd erupted and the momentum took over, leaving the match all but over and another national championship shot gone.
But to call the bridesmaid-forever Blue Devils failures is undeserved.
Breaking into the tennis establishment isn't easy, in fact it doesn't happen often. The elite of the elite, a five-team pantheon, owns all 18 championships. With the exception of Texas' two titles, if you're not in the SEC or the PAC-10, you're on the outside looking in.
But it isn't just the winds of change that are blowing through the game today, it's a small hurricane. The influx of foreign talent has given program's like San Diego State a face-the bubbly Zuzana Lesenarova-and a hook in the recruiting heart of Stanford, Southern Cal and California. And with the new 64-team draw, the game is more open and the elite no longer has recruiting dominance.
And although the Blue Devils have yet to seriously break into recruiting ground beyond the U.S. and Canada, they have established themselves in the highest level of recruiting privilege. The new indoor tennis facilities set to open next year will only make Duke more attractive to that potential No. 1 recruit.
"You've got to look at Duke now, which wasn't always the case," Webb said. "If you look at the top six schools any year now, Duke is going to be right up there."
When the Blue Devils made the national title match last year, they were the first team to make their first appearance there since 1989. And with Duke's recent prominence, what was in the early '90s a top-15 team has now reached the highest level of national competition, competing in four straight Final Fours.
"The biggest change in four years is the expectations have been raised," said Webb, the biggest reason for Duke's mid-decade ascent. "Three years ago we were really happy just to make it to the finals. Last year we beat Stanford and we were thrilled to be in the finals. We wanted to win but it was so great to be there. And then this year it was the national title, that was it for us. In four years that was the biggest change, expecting to win."
Next year though, the hurdle will get even higher. Very few teams can recover from losing three 100-match winners like the Blue Devils have to do with graduates Webb, Goldstein and Kristin Sanderson. But the core of the team will be young and talented, with a lone senior, a pair of juniors, a pair of sophomores and three incoming recruits battling for a spot in a wide open lineup.
And this team will be one that bears the stamp of Ashworth, who will enter his third full season at the helm. Sophomore Megan Miller, who's reached the top of every level she's ever played at, should grace the head of Duke's new lineup. And it's Miller who may be the best example of the new turn at Duke Tennis Stadium.
Always a baseline scrapper, Ashworth has molded her, like the rest of the team, into an all-out attacker. It is in effect, the signal of the Blue Devils arrival in the era of grip it and rip it tennis.
Miller still lacks a reliable net game, but the all-out aggression not only to win but to take her opponent's confidence away is the practice of the Ashworth theorem on tennis.
"I've never seen a team so focused and determined to just come out and win," Ole Miss coach Jerry Montgomery said. "They come out on a mission-seek and destroy."
Then there's freshman Erica Biro, who lacks the height and reach of Webb, but brings a similar style of suffocating, net-oriented play that isn't often seen in the college ranks. She skyrocketed through the rankings in the fall, jumping from unranked to No. 50 in the nation in the fall tournaments and there's little reason to believe she can not duplicate that performance closer to the top of the singles lineup.
Add to the lineup the consummate team player Kathy Sell, who Ashworth once said would do anything he asked her to-even if it would make her lose-and the reports of the death of Duke tennis appear a bit exaggerated.
Even the string of continued near-misses has not dampened Ashworth's hopes for next season and beyond. After getting recruit after recruit who chose Duke wanting to be a part of the first team to win a national title, the series of near-misses has not hurt the team's recruiting prowess. In fact, it may have done the opposite.
"I've thought about what it would have been like if I went to Stanford or Florida a lot recently," Webb said after losing in the doubles semifinals. "Florida has played for the national championship every year I've been in school and Stanford has won two of them, but I don't think I'd do anything different.... The team is in better shape now than when I came in."
And after the end of the '00 season, it probably will be again.
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