After tearing through their competition at the ITA Mideast Regional Championships last weekend, Duke’s Jonathan Stokke and Peter Rodrigues came up just a little short in the final round of the event.
The Blue Devil duo, the 20th-ranked pair in the nation, lost an 8-6 decision to North Carolina’s Brad Pomeroy and Geoff Boyd in Monday’s championship match. The defeat was a severe disappointment, especially considering that only a day earlier Stokke and Rodrigues had upset the No. 6 team in the nation—Virginia’s Nick Meythaler and Rylan Rizza. Had the Blue Devils won they would have earned an invitation to the prestigious ITA National Indoor Championships in November.
“The other team played a little bit above their level,” assistant coach Jon Neeter said. “Things didn’t go our way.... They played better than we expected, and our team probably didn’t play as well as we could have.”
Rodrigues and Stokke pulled ahead early, but their opponents were able to climb their way back into the match.
“I lost my serve three times,” Rodrigues said. “They returned really well, but I don’t think I was serving as well as I should have been. I think that was one of the important factors in losing today.... I think this was a match we could have won. I don’t know if we should have won it, but I think if we were playing better, we could have won it. It wasn’t one of those matches where, if we played really hard, we would win one time out of 10—we had the potential to beat these guys.”
A few serendipitous bounces and at least one disputed ruling from the chair abetted the Tar Heels’ comeback.
“There were a few lucky shots here and there that just didn’t go our way,” Neeter said. “They got overruled on a critical point. The umpire made a bad call—everybody in the stands thought it was a bad call, and even the opposing coach though it was a bad call. We got hurt by that in the most critical point in the match. There’s nothing you can do about that when the official makes a bad call.”
This marks the second time the two have reached the final round of the ITA Regional Championship.
Duke’s doubles tandem of Ludovic Walter and Jason Zimmermann received a bye to the National Indoors after winning the event in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 2003. Walter also qualified for this year’s singles competition Sunday.
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