Head coach Ramsey Smith had one roster spot to fill after senior Kiril Dimitrov's graduation, and he looks to have replaced Dimitrov with one of the best junior players in the world.
Smith and the Blue Devils announced Tuesday that Henrique Cunha, a native of Jaú, Brazil, had signed with the program. Cunha was ranked as high as No. 6 in the International Tennis Junior Association rankings last year, and is the highest-rated recruit ever to sign with Duke.
Smith is entering his second season as the Blue Devils' head coach after spending three seasons as an assistant, and Cunha is his first recruit since taking charge of the program.
"We're all thrilled to have him coming in in the fall-he's a great recruit and a great player, everyone knows how good a player he is," Smith said. "He's just very respectful toward everybody, didn't have a big ego and wants to work hard in the classroom and on the court. Everyone I've talked to has said how good a character he is, and I think he's going to fit in perfectly."
When Cunha arrives in the Fall, he will join a Blue Devil roster already stocked with two other international players. Sophomore Torsten Wietoska is from Germany, and junior Alain Michel is from Sao Paulo, Brazil, just 200 miles from Cunha's hometown.
Cunha has already had success at the professional level despite his amateur status. He went 68-28 in singles play as a junior and won the Bahia Open, a professional tournament open to amateurs in Porto Seguro, Brazil, without dropping a set in October.
"On paper, we've never signed a kid this high internationally," Smith said. "He was 6 in the world, he's played Wimbledon and the US Open [juniors], and he was really contemplating going pro."
Cunha might have turned pro straight out of high school, but when the Blue Devil coaching staff heard the Brazilian was thinking about American college tennis, Duke got involved as quickly as it could.
Smith gave assistant coach Josh Goffi much of the credit for landing Cunha.
Goffi's father lives in Brazil and is a tennis coach there, and Smith said the Goffi family's presence and name recognition "got us in the door." After establishing contact in Brazil with Cunha's family, the youngster came for an official visit to Durham in the spring , and officially signed with Duke Tuesday.
"[Goffi] set the table, starting conversations with Henrique and his coach, and once we got things started I got really involved and it was really an effort between both of us," said Smith, who did not travel to Brazil during the recruitment process. "A lot of times assistant coaches aren't that involved in recruiting but here he was a huge part of it."
With Cunha in the lineup, the Blue Devils will boast a formidable one-two punch, as Cunha and junior Reid Carleton are likely to play Nos. 1 and 2 in some order, Smith said. Carleton often played at the top slot in 2009 and finished the season with a 20-15 record overall, but went just 7-10 as Duke's top player during the team season in the Spring semester.
If Cunha is able to fill the No. 1 seed, Carleton could drop down to the second slot, where he would face lower-ranked players
Behind Carleton and Cunha, Duke returns its top four players from last year in lone senior Dylan Arnould, juniors Michel and Jared Pinsky and sophomore Luke Marchese. Smith said he expects competition between those four and the rest of his young players-including Wietoska, who missed the entire ACC season with a knee injury last year-for a limited number of spots in the bottom of the rotation.
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