The NCAA Tournament’s round of 16 was not so sweet for the men’s tennis team, as Duke suffered a bitter 4-3 defeat at the hands of Pepperdine (24-2), Sunday. The ninth-seeded Blue Devils (20-6) nearly came back from a 3-1 deficit, but the Waves’ Richard Johnson defeated a cramping Jason Zimmermann, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1, to end Duke’s season.
“Zimmermann played well, but he tired after a set and a half, and then got down 5-0 in the third because he was cramping,” junior Jonathan Stokke said. “I don’t think he necessarily should have won, but if he was in better shape he could have won.”
Down 3-1, Duke mounted a charge behind junior Ludovic Walter and sophomore Peter Rodrigues. Fifth-ranked Walter brought the match to 3-2 with a strongly-executed straight-set victory over Scott Doerner by the count of 7-6 (4) 6-2, and then Rodrigues won a dramatic third-set tiebreaker to even the match at 3-3.
After the Blue Devils won all three doubles matches to claim the initial point, Pepperdine stepped it up a notch and reeled off three consecutive singles points. Stokke succumbed at the second singles position to No. 25 Pedro Rico, senior Peter Shults dropped a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 heartbreaker to Ivor Lovrak at the No. 4 flight, and freshman Ned Samuelson put up a strong fight at No. 6 before going down in a second-set tiebreaker, by a count of 6-3, 7-6 (3).
“[Lovrak] was really good,” Stokke said. “Of course Shults was coming off pneumonia two weeks earlier. So considering he was just getting back to 100 percent, I thought he played well.”
Zimmermann and Samuelson did not start at singles for most of the season, but an injury to the regular No. 2 Stephen Amritraj and the demotion of freshman Charles Brezac forced the duo into starting roles. The depth that had made Duke so strong for two-thirds of the year was no longer there by the season’s end, a factor that ultimately led to the team’s demise.
“We were talking about it after we lost that having Stephen would have helped our seed,” Stokke said. “Pepperdine is as tough a match as we could have in this round, and we knew that with Steve we had a good enough team to do some major damage.”
Pepperdine lost its next match 4-0 to then-undefeated and top-seeded Baylor, who would advance to the championship match and lose to seventh-seeded UCLA 4-3. The loss snapped Baylor’s 57-match winning streak.
Assuming Amritraj recovers from his knee injury, the Blue Devils already appear to be strong contenders heading into next season. Losing only Shults and Zimmermann to graduation, Duke may have a chance to push the bar even higher in 2006.
“I thought we did a much better job with our work ethic this year, and it was my most enjoyable season,” Stokke said. “It’s really tough that we lose Shults, but hopefully one or two guys can step up, and we can be even stronger next season.”
Walter won his first round match over Callum Beale of Texas Wednesday in the NCAA singles championship. He will play Boise State’s Luke Shields Thursday.
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