For the fourth straight match, the Blue Devils came up on the wrong side of a close contest.
No. 24 Duke fell to No. 21 Northwestern Sunday at the Sheffield Indoor Tennis Center, dropping a 5-2 decision and remaining winless against ranked opponents. The Wildcats claimed the fourth team point of the day, clinching the match with a 6-3, 7-5 victory by No. 50 Sam Shropshire against T.J. Pura on court two. The loss was Pura’s second consecutive in a decisive match after dropping a narrow three-set affair in Duke’s Friday matchup against No. 7 Illinois.
“It was a tough loss. I was very impressed with Northwestern, thought they played extremely well,” Duke head coach Ramsey Smith said. “Things just haven’t seemed to be going our way as of late, but I’m a believer that those things kind of even out as long as we have a good attitude and keep working.”
As has become common during its losing streak, Duke (1-4) dropped the doubles point for the third straight match, forcing the Blue Devils to fight back from a 1-0 deficit heading into singles play. The matches stayed even through four games on every court, but a 6-3 win on court three gave Northwestern the first victory of the day.
Duke regained momentum when the court one duo of Nicolas Alvarez and Vincent Lin managed a break to take the lead just as the Wildcats managed the same feat on court two. With the Blue Devils up 6-5, Lin fired one serve after another at the 52nd-ranked pairing of Fedor Baev and Strong Kirchheimer, closing out the 7-5 win to make court two’s contest the deciding match.
“[The] doubles point [was] really close again. We played great on [court] one, didn’t play great on [court] three, played well at [court] two—[we] had match point,” Smith said.
Josh Levine and Ryan Dickerson won three straight games to dig themselves out of a 4-2 deficit, and the match stayed close through a tiebreaker in which neither team could gain more than a one-point advantage. The Wildcats finally grabbed a 7-6 (5) win behind a lob over Dickerson and Levine—both of whom had creeped up to the net—that set up a match point on Konrad Zieba’s service point.
“Doubles sets the tone,” Smith said. “Singles, initially we had some chances early across the board. [We] didn’t capitalize on some of them, and I just felt like we lost a little bit of energy—a little bit of belief.”
Pura’s loss at No. 2 singles moved Northwestern (5-1) to 4-0 on the day, and the three remaining matches entered a third set to determine if the Blue Devils would make it onto the scoreboard.
Lin raced to a 6-0 sweep of Baev in the first set on court four but faltered in the second, falling behind a break to lose the set, 4-6. Court five followed a similar trend—Adrian Chamdani claimed a 6-3 victory in the first frame, but Ben Vandixhorn evened the score with a 6-3 win of his own. Lin could not sustain his first-set pace and gave the Wildcats their fifth point of the day when he dropped the decisive set, 2-6. Chamdani delivered one of two bright spots for the Blue Devils, regrouping from the second-set loss to finish the final match, winning 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.
The other point of pride came on court one, where No. 12 Alvarez battled against No. 16 Zieba in the sophomore’s highest-ranked matchup of the dual season. Alvarez played calmly despite long points, forcing his Northwestern opponent to move along the baseline as the two traded groundstrokes through three sets.
“I’m really happy with the way we finished with Adrian getting that win and Nico beating a top-[20] player,” Smith said. “This is the best Nico’s been this spring, and mentally he was good from start to finish and played a really complete match, so definitely a big positive for him.”
After losing the first frame 3-6, Alvarez reached a 5-3 advantage in the second behind a break in the fourth game. The sophomore fired a shot down the line behind Zieba, who couldn’t react in time, giving Alvarez the 6-3 win and sending the match into a third set.
The Lima, Peru, native remained composed throughout the decisive set, methodically placing balls just outside of his opponent’s reach. Zieba made few mistakes throughout the match but could not reverse his deficit, and Alvarez earned his fifth win against a ranked opponent, claiming the third set, 6-2.
“It was a pretty physical match, and Zieba seemed to be struggling there at the end, so credit to Nico and his conditioning,” Smith said. “He really just kind of wore him down, but it was a great effort from Nico. He had a plan going in and executed it and stuck with it when things weren’t going well.”
The Blue Devils will take a break both from top-25 competition and the home court atmosphere as they take to the road and attempt to improve their worst team start since the 2001-02 season. Duke will take on Tennessee Friday before heading north to face Michigan Sunday.
“Our end goal is to maximize our potential by the end of the spring, and be playing our best tennis then,” Smith said. “[There is] still a long way to go there—both time-wise and playing-level-wise—but we just need to stay positive and keep working and learning from these matches.”
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