The Blue Devils continued building on their strong start to the spring by taking down two opponents in one afternoon to remain undefeated on the season.
In the first contest, No. 6 Duke defeated Michigan 6-1 Sunday at the Sheffield Indoor Tennis Center before turning to defeat N.C. Central by the same score a few hours later.
“Record-wise, it couldn’t have gone any better,” Duke head coach Ramsey Smith said. “We’re playing really good tennis, and every single person on the team has stepped up and contributed in some way, and each day it seems like it could be a little different.”
The Blue Devils (9-0) had dropped the doubles point in their most recent matches—victories against Northwestern and Tennessee—sending the squad into singles play already down 1-0. Duke reversed that trend Sunday against the Wolverines (1-4) as the first-court duo of junior Josh Levine and senior Jason Tahir marched to a decisive 6-2 victory. Not long after, junior Bruno Semenzato and redshirt senior Chris Mengel gave their team the 1-0 advantage after a 6-4 defeat of Davis Crocker and Tyler Gardiner.
“We came out with really good energy,” Smith said. “We’ve lost two doubles points in a row, so that was really important that we set the tone from the beginning, and number 1 in particular did a really good job.... Josh Levine came out on fire and really kind of set the tone for the dual match.”
Duke claimed a 2-0 lead with a milestone win on Court 3. Senior Raphael Hemmeler claimed his 100th career win in doubles play in the dual opener against Michigan State Jan. 16. Barely three weeks later, he defeated Michigan’s No. 100 Alex Knight for the same marker in singles competition.
Coming full circle in singles play, Hemmeler’s first-ever win as a Blue Devil came against Alex Buzzi of then-No. 32 Michigan during his freshman year. Sunday, the Zurich native topped another Wolverine for his 100th.
“It’s a long journey for those four years, even though time flies,” Hemmeler said. “As a freshman, everything is so new, and you just try to win every match—or to compete in at least every match—as hard as possible, and I think it’s a really nice outcome for me now as a senior, so it’s awesome to join this club.”
Michigan responded after Hemmeler’s statement win by claiming the Court 6 match in which Crocker defeated T.J. Pura 6-1, 6-4 to make the score 2-1. Although Duke claimed four first sets across the board, the Wolverines continued to fight back.
On Court 5, Mengel continued his momentum from doubles en route to a 6-2, 6-3 singles win against Carter Lin. No. 36 Tahir gave opponent Michael Zhu just one game in the first set but had to fight off a close second set, winning 6-2, 7-5 to claim the match for the Blue Devils with a 4-1 overall score.
“All great teams are going to make a desperation surge—[Michigan] certainly did that,” Smith said. “We knew singles was going to be very tough. They have a lot of good players up and down the board, and we got off to strong starts...but [it was] certainly closer than a 6-1 score.”
Having chosen to continue play even with the match clinched, the pairings on Courts 1 and 4 continued their fast-paced second-set battles. No. 18 Nicolas Alvarez claimed the first set handily on the top court but lost the second in a seven-point tiebreaker and faced a superbreaker to decide the winner.
Semenzato played a characteristically lengthy match, dropping the first set 7-5 then rallying to take the second 6-4. In two 10-point tiebreakers, Alvarez and Semenzato won by grabbing early leads.
“I really like winning superbreakers, even when the match is clinched,” Smith said. “That could have easily been 4-3 and have two of our top guys coming off of losses, but we were able to get those W’s and be feeling good.”
The squad took their momentum from the early win directly into a decisive win against the Eagles (0-3). After claiming the doubles point, the Blue Devils took three consecutive singles matches and gave up just eight games total across all three.
Freshman Andrew DeJoy and junior Daniel McCall stepped into the lineup in place of Alvarez and Semenzato, earning wins in their first dual contests of the season.
Duke now sets its sights on a weekend of ITA Team Indoor competition to take place in Chicago beginning Friday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.