CARY, N.C. — In a way, the doubles point seems like a lot of effort for not much payoff. Six players play three doubles matches, and from that, a team can earn a grand total of one point.
But even though that lone doubles point counts toward the final score only as much one singles match, it can be significantly more important.
“It’s only one out of seven points,” senior Reid Carleton said. “But it really sets the tone.”
On Sunday at Cary Tennis Park, Carleton and his teammates nearly took that critical first doubles point against Virginia, but came up short to fall behind 1-0. They made headway toward erasing the Virginia lead, but the Cavaliers proved too strong, finishing with a 4-0 victory to capture the ACC championship.
For much of doubles, the three courts were about as evenly matched as possible. On court two, David Holland and Chris Mengel stayed on serve in a hotly contested match that reached a 6-6 tie. Cavaliers Jarmere Jenkins and Julen Uriguen managed a late break, though, and then held serve to win 8-6. Shortly afterward, Virginia clinched the doubles point with a win at No. 3, leaving the No. 1 match between two top-10 duos unfinished.
That meant the Blue Devils needed to win four of six singles matches to pull off the upset. Initially, things looked promising. Luke Marchese took a quick set at No. 6, and Fred Saba cashed in an early break against Jenkins to give Duke two first-set wins. A visibly frustrated Mengel fell behind early and couldn’t recover at No. 3, putting a tally in Virginia’s column.
However, the battles taking place at the top two spots rendered the success at the lower positions moot. Henrique Cunha, ranked seventh nationally, entered his match with fifth-ranked Michael Shabaz as an apparent favorite, since Shabaz had never beaten Cunha through four previous meetings. This time, though, Cunha came into the contest having sprained his ankle against North Carolina the previous day.
Cunha hung with Shabaz to start, but ceded a late break to lose the set 7-5. Shabaz carried that momentum over to beat Cunha 6-1 in the second set and give Virginia its third point.
At No. 2, thirteenth-ranked Reid Carleton took on the No. 2 player in the nation, freshman Alex Domijan. Carleton gave the 6-foot-7 Domijan everything he could handle, taking the first set to a tiebreak. Carleton took a 5-3 lead in the tiebreaker and earned a set point with a 7-6 advantage, but Domijan won the next three points and the set, taking much of the wind out of Duke’s sails.
“That really changes the momentum of that match,” Smith said. “It was one of those weird things where we got down 3-0, but I still—until it got deep into Reid’s match—I felt like we had a good chance of winning.”
With the momentum in Domijan’s favor, the freshman shut out Carleton in the second set to give Virginia its fifth consecutive ACC championship, and its seventh in eight years.
“I thought our energy was actually better than theirs,” Smith said. “It just didn’t quite happen.”
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