After the Duke Bonk Invitationals were canceled due to Hurricane Florence, members of both the Duke men's and women's tennis teams kicked off the fall slate a bit later than planned.
Duke women's tennis sent two players to the Debbie Southern Furman Fall Classic in Greenville, S.C., this weekend and the Blue Devils men's tennis team had a trio competing at the Gamecock Fall Invite at the Carolina Tennis Center in Columbia, S.C. While the women found success with senior Kaitlyn McCarthy advancing to the finals and the doubles tandem of McCarthy and sophomore Ema Lazic falling in the championship, the men struggled, coming away with just a single victory on the weekend.
“I thought for our first matches, it was a good weekend,” Duke women's tennis head coach Jamie Ashworth told GoDuke.com. “We learned a lot about what we need to work on…for Kaitlyn, we will work on those things this week and in the next two weeks.”
No. 84 McCarthy knocked a fellow ranked player to open the quarterfinal round of Flight 2. She defeated No. 95 Bojana Markovic—a former top 800 WTA ranked player—6-4, 6-2.
Then came the flight semifinal match against Mississippi State’s Magda Andaloglou, whose ranking peaked at No. 112 in February. The Cary, N.C., native reversed the set scores for this match as she knocked off her SEC opponent 6-2, 6-4 to set up a championship meeting with South Carolina’s Paige Cline.
Cline fought off McCarthy to take the opening set 7-5. In the second set, McCarthy competed, but fell 4-6 as Cline took the singles crown in Greenville.
The less experienced Lazic, who did not see a lot of action last spring, lost her first-round match to Ohio State’s Danielle Wolf 2-6, 4-6. The sophomore was able to bounce back immediately, however, earning two wins and a crown before the weekend was finished.
In the consolation semifinals of Flight 7, Lazic knocked off Wake Forest’s Mary Caroline Meredith in straight sets 6-1, 6-3. Meredith saw action mainly in the fifth position for the Demon Deacons and reeled off 25 wins a season ago.
Once again, the former top-65 junior player matched up with a Wake Forest starter in the finals of the consolation draw. Against last spring’s sixth singles player Alexis Franco, Lazic took the championship 6-2, 6-4. The Duke sophomore is now only three wins away from tying her season-high number.
“The two matches Ema won were the best I’ve seen her play at Duke,” Ashworth said. “That’s a positive sign for her and for our team moving forward. She didn’t play a lot of matches last spring and she definitely competed better than she has in a long time.”
But the Blue Devils did not walk away having only seen the singles side. For the first time in their respective careers, the senior-sophomore duo paired up to pick up their first doubles victories of the season. McCarthy, who entered the weekend ranked preseason No. 1 with classmate Ellyse Hamlin, brought her doubles success to South Carolina. While Lazic had only four career doubles wins to her name before this weekend, she improved her doubles game over the summer playing in professional tournaments.
The tandem rolled past Texas’ Tijana Spasojevic and Fernanda Labrana 8-3 to mark their place in the semifinals of Flight 2. In their next match, McCarthy and Lazic took on South Carolina’s Cline and Silvia Chinellato, with the newfound duo winning 8-4 to set up a final matchup with Mississippi State’s Adaloglou and Emma Antonaki.
“I was pleasantly surprised with how they played doubles the first day,” Ashworth said. “They had a really good win against Texas and then South Carolina.”
The Blue Devils ended up losing the eight-game pro set in a deciding tiebreaker. At 7-all in games, the Bulldog duo took seven out of the eight points to win the flight championship.
“The third match was a bit disappointing and they know if they were to play together again, they would have to come out with a little more energy and a sense of urgency,” Ashworth said.
Lazic will have ample time before she gets back onto the court for the Blue Devils, which will be in Chapel Hill. The sophomore will not play in next week’s ITA All-American Championships in Pacific Palisades, Calif., but McCarthy will be making the cross-country trip. She is currently slated to compete in the main draw of doubles with junior Meible Chi, who will also be starting in the qualifying singles draw.
100 miles southeast in Columbia, S.C., the men's tennis trio could not match the level of success that their female counterparts had.
On day one, senior Jason Lapidus lost 2-6, 1-6 to Tennessee sophomore Adam Walton, junior Robert Levine fell to Georgia Southern’s Antonio Muniz 4-6, 1-6 and freshman Robert Maciag—making his collegiate debut—lost in straight sets to Mississippi State’s Trevor Foshey, 4-6, 4-6.
All three of the Blue Devils suffered losses in the Flight A Round of 32, but only two played a consolation round match Saturday.
Lapidus was tasked with Purdue’s Athell Bennett in the first consolation round. The Duke senior could not take down the Valley Stream, N.Y., native as the Boilermaker junior earned a straight set victory 6-4, 6-4.
Levine, on the other hand, took his consolation match the distance, but eventually fell in a third-set deciding super tiebreaker. Bennett’s teammate Mateo Julio took the opening frame 6-3. But the Blue Devil junior recovered to win the second set 6-4. In the tiebreaker, Julio took control of the match and won 10-5 to move on to the second round of the back draw.
On the doubles end, Lapidus and Levine paired up to compete in the Flight A Round of 16 Friday. But their success replicated that of the singles side, as the tandem fell 6-8 to SMU’s Jan-Simon Vrbsky and Tomas Vaise. The Mustangs’ duo sat at the top of the lineup a season ago and earned 12 dual-match wins including against the No. 62 pair from Tulsa.
Not deterred from their defeat, the Duke tandem were back on the court to take on Winthrop’s Diego Quiroz and Gabriel Dias. The Blue Devils' only doubles entry put Duke in the win column for the first time this fall. The senior-junior duo—that do not have a great deal of experience playing together in official matches—won 8-4.
Lapidus, Levine and Maciag will be back in action in the prequalifying draw beginning Sept. 29 in Tulsa, Okla., at the ITA All-American Championships. The trio will be joined by senior Ryan Dickerson and junior Spencer Furman in the same draw.
Senior Catalin Mateas and junior Nick Stachowiak are both in the qualifying draw and will also be competing in the doubles draw.
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