The men's tennis team improved to 12-9 and 6-0 in the ACC this weekend with two big wins. The No. 13 Blue Devils wiped out No. 25 Texas Christian Saturday en route to upending the Clemson Tigers 6-1 yesterday in their 47th straight ACC victory.
"We're above .500 now which is good. [Coach Jay Lapidus] is really excited about that," Duke junior Michael Yani said. "It was a good weekend."
Sunday, the Blue Devils secured the doubles point against the Tigers when Nos. 1 and 3 both took wins. Junior Alex Bose and sophomore Jason Zimmerman were paired up at No. 3. The duo took out Micah Thompson and Nathan Thompson, 8-6. And at No. 1, Yani and Phillip King defeated Goran Sterijovski and Damissa Robinson, 9-8 to clinch the point. Joel Spicher and Peter Shults fell to Marko Gojanovic and Sander Koning, 8-5 at No. 2.
Spicher clinched the singles victory over the Tigers with his win at No. 4, defeating Gojanovic, 6-1, 6-2. The top-seeded King was first to win in singles, beating Sterijovski in a quick match, 6-2, 6-0. At No. 2, Yani defeated Robinson, 6-3, 6-4. Zimmerman fell in a hard-fought match as Koning took him out 6-1, 6-2 at No. 3. It was the only singles match the Blue Devils lost to the Tigers. Yorke Allen's first set at No. 5 went into a tiebreaker, but the junior easily took the second set on the way to a win over Micah Thompson, 7-6, 6-2. Peter Shults quickly defeated Nathan Thompson, 6-2, 6-2.
Against TCU Saturday, the Blue Devils won at Nos. 1 and 2 in doubles and swept singles. Yani and King defeated Daniel Scholten and Fabrizio Sestini 8-4 at No. 1. Spicher and Bose took a win over Alex Menichini and Chris Brandi, 8-4. Jacob Martin Toni Gordon of TCU defeated Bose and Zimmerman 8-6 at No. 3.
"We won pretty handily on Saturday and it was nice because we lost to TCU last year," Yani said. "We lost 4-3 and it came down to a deciding match, so even though they lost a couple of their guys last year, we also lost a couple of our guys, so it was a good matchup."
King, Yani and Allen all took singles wins at Nos. 1, 2 and 5, respectively, to clinch the win for the Blue Devils. The rest of the matches did not finish. King defeated Sestini 6-4, 6-1. Yani won over Toni Gordon 6-3, 6-4 at No. 2; and Allen easily defeated Jacob Martin 6-2, 6-4.
"It was good the way we handled TCU," King said. "We haven't had a match yet where everybody played well, but there's nothing wrong with that. We're hanging in there. We're definitely getting better."
The Blue Devils have a big and important obstacle in their next match. Wednesday, Duke faces North Carolina, which also has a perfect ACC record at 5-0, at home. The match is the third to the last of the regular season on the way to the upcoming ACC Tournament.
"We're making good progress," King said. "We have a lot of confidence and we're on the right track."
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