After spending the last two weekends split on opposite sides of the country, the Blue Devils will spend the next few days competing in the Triangle.
The Duke men will head to Cary, N.C., to co-host the USTA/ITA Carolina ITA Regional at the Cary Tennis Park along with N.C. State. The tournament will run Thursday through Monday and feature 128 competitors looking to advance to the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., Nov. 6-9.
The Blue Devil women will also be participating in the USTA/ITA Carolinas Regional, although theirs will take place at North Carolina's Cone-Kenfield Tennis Center. The tournament will begin Thursday with qualifying singles and main-draw doubles and will conclude Monday with the finals of singles and the semifinals and finals in doubles.
Senior Jason Tahir will enter the men's tournament looking to build on the momentum stemming from his second-place finish at the Wake Forest Invitational last weekend. George Washington's Nikita Zverkov will be his first challenge, as the two will take the court Thursday at 11 a.m.
Tahir will be joined by seven other Blue Devils for the first time all season, as freshman Nicolas Alvarez, sophomore T.J. Pura, junior Bruno Semenzato, junior Josh Levine, junior Daniel McCall, redshirt senior Cale Hammond, and senior Raphael Hemmeler will all make the short trip to Cary.
Alvarez has had a standout fall campaign thus far, posting a 9-2 record and already securing a trip to the USTA/ITA National Indoor after advancing to the quarterfinals of the ITA All-American Championships Oct. 4 in Tulsa, Okla. He will take on Clemson's Christian Harris Thursday at 11 a.m.
Semenzato also had a fair amount of success at the ITA All-Americans, advancing to the quarterfinals of the consolation bracket. The Brazil native will face Dreshaun Jarmon of North Carolina A&T at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
Levine participated in the Wake Forest Invitational with Tahir and redshirt senior Chris Mengel last weekend, but neither Levine nor Mengel was able to match the success enjoyed by Alvarez and Tahir so far this fall. Levine went 1-3 in his first action of the year following his return from injury, and Mengel finished 1-2.
The men will shake things up in doubles play, as all four pairs will be competing together for the first time this season.
All doubles play will start at 11:30 a.m. Friday, as Hammond and Tahir will play Winthrop's Michael Chen and J.D. O'Brien. Levine and Pura will get things underway against Elon's Stefan Fortmann and Brian Kowalaski. Rick Timmerman and Vuk Velikovic of Coastal Carolina will challenge Alvarez and Hemmeler, and the duo of McCall and Semenzato will face Jordan Kaufman and Joshua Luck of Elon.
On the women's side, Ester Goldfeld and Alyssa Smith will look to rebound from a disappointing showing at the ITA Women’s All-American Championships in Pacific Palisades, Calif. The duo was upset in straight sets by the San Jose State tandem of Marie Klocker and Gaelle Rey, and Goldfeld went 0-2 in singles play.
The rest of the team took on a host of opponents at the Princeton Invitational in Princeton, N.J., last weekend and fared well, finishing the three-day event with a 20-4 combined record. Redshirt senior Rachel Kahan and freshman Rebecca Smaller teamed once again as a doubles pair to finish 4-0. The duo has yet to lose a match this season.
Senior Annie Mulholland and freshman Samantha Harris also had a strong East Coast performance. The pair combined for three wins in doubles and seven in singles.
The Blue Devils do not have any entries in the ITA Regionals singles bracket, but are loaded throughout the doubles competition. Goldfeld and Smith are the No. 1 seed and have a first round bye. They will play the winners of a doubles match between Davidson and Winthrop Thursday at 5 p.m.
Kahan and Smaller will face Masey Demoss and Amy Ellis of UNC Greensboro while freshman Christina Makarova and Mulholland take on N.C. State's Natalia Janowicz and Joanna Nalborska. Both matches will start at 4 p.m. Thursday.
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