CAROLINA CRUSHED

Reid Carleton let out a victorious roar and slammed his racket to the ground.

The junior had just scored the clinching point of No. 14 Duke’s 4-3 victory over No. 19 North Carolina (16-5, 6-3 in the ACC) in a contest that was somehow even closer than the score would suggest.

In a moment that neatly summarized what was by all accounts a tumultuous afternoon, Carleton’s teammates rushed to his side on court one of Sheffield Indoor Tennis Center—joined by members of the Duke men’s soccer and wrestling teams—after a five-hour long affair that initially started on the outdoor courts of Ambler Stadium and was full of exciting and unusual turns of events.

Carleton, who at one point led North Carolina’s Jose Hernandez 3-2 in the second set after winning the first, 6-4, surrendered four straight games to send the match to the third set. By the middle of the final set, the other courts had cleared off and left the ledger in a 3-3 tie—it was clear that the Carleton-Hernandez match would determine which school would earn bragging rights.

After Carleton won the first game of the third set to take back control, Hernandez broke Carleton’s serve in an intense, back-and-forth game to regain his momentum from the second set. He then held his own serve and broke Carleton for a second consecutive time to take a 4-1 lead in the third set.

With all the momentum going against him, Carleton managed to break Hernandez’s serve to give himself a fighting chance. The next game, on the Blue Devil’s serve, might have been the longest in a match filled with long games. Carleton staved off multiple break points in that crucial game, and both players were visibly tired at the end of point, resorting to lobbing the ball rather than hit it directly.

“We played a bunch of long games today, but that was probably the most important long game,” Carleton said. “He had a bunch of break points to make it 5-2 and if he had made it 5-2 the match most likely would have been over.”

Hernandez eventually began to cramp up, and Carleton took advantage.

“I knew that he was cramping—he ended up taking an injury timeout during that game,” Carleton said. “I was just trying to win that game and go after every single ball and give myself a chance.”

With Hernandez leading five games to four in the third set, and up 30-love—just two points away from earning a victory for the Tar Heels—the Durham sky let loose just enough rain to delay the match. Most of the North Carolina fans that had made the eight-mile trek down to see the match assumed that Carleton could not put together a rally and left under the assumption that Hernandez was comfortably in control. Having seen the rest of the match, they should have known better.

“It was a bizarre situation with Hernandez cramping up,” Smith said. “Reid did a great job of prolonging the match, and conditioning came into play.”

The match moved inside and both players were given the opportunity to warm up again. That gave Carleton a chance to collect himself and regain his focus, and it also meant that Hernandez’s cramps would continue to set in. By the end of the match, Hernandez, who put in a herculean effort to fight through the pain, was barely able to walk—near the end, he double faulted a point during which he did not even try to jump on his serve.

Once indoors, Carleton fought back to force a tiebreaker. After falling behind 5-2, the junior reeled off five consecutive points and won the match after Hernandez’s return went wide on Carleton’s final serve.

Carleton’s spectacular finish, however, would have been meaningless without strong performances from the other Blue Devils.  

Although Duke (15-6, 8-1) lost the doubles point of the match, with the top pairing of Carleton and freshman sensation Henrique Cunha losing for the first time since Jan. 30, the Blue Devils rebounded in the singles portion.

Like Carleton, Cunha won his individual match as No. 1. The victory is the 13th straight for Cunha—who is No. 3 nationally—though, like Carleton, he needed a comeback to make it happen. Cunha lost a first-set tiebreaker but rallied to win the next two sets 6-3, 6-2, gaining momentum as he went along. Beyond his contribution to the match ledger, Cunha’s win came at a crucial time—tying the team score at three—and brought energy to the Ambler Stadium crowd.  

The other individual victories for the Blue Devils came from the bottom of the lineup. Junior Jared Pinsky won his fourth straight match in straight sets against North Carolina’s No. 5 Zach Hunter while sophomore Luke Marchese managed to stay undefeated in the ACC by beating Andrew Crone 6-2, 7-5.  

Senior Dylan Arnould, who lost from the third spot, still felt more than satisfied with the conclusion of his final match at home.  

“It was the most amazing match I’ve ever been a part of in my four years here,” he said. “I really couldn’t ask for a better ending.”