The stands in Ambler Stadium were filled with former Duke tennis players and their families when head coach Jamie Ashworth collected the 250th ACC win of his Duke career, making him the first ACC coach to do so. Digging deep, No. 9 Duke defeated SMU 4-2 Sunday in Durham to remain undefeated in the conference.
“I feel old,” Ashworth said. “It’s due to a lot of good players and good teams that we’ve had. That is a celebration of the girls on the team more than anybody else.”
“He’s been a great leader for me all four years, and I am so proud,” senior Emma Jackson said of her coach.
The Blue Devils had to come from behind to secure the doubles point. On court one, freshman Irina Balus and senior Ellie Coleman cruised to a 6-0 win against the Mustangs, but when their match ended, courts two and three trailed 2-3 and 3-4, respectively.
Jackson and freshman Liv Hovde trailed 3-4 on court three before breaking SMU’s serve to go up 5-4 and take the doubles point in a key deuce point.
“I think we weren’t clean at the start,” Ashworth said. “We were giving away free points. We just have to be better, and I know we will be better.”
This Sunday match came in between a key win against No. 4 North Carolina Wednesday and a road trip this coming week to face Stanford and No. 17 Cal. Stanford has been the pinnacle of women's tennis for decades with 20 NCAA Championships, its most recent in 2019.
“I thought it was a bit of a trap match coming off UNC and N.C. State, going to Cal and Stanford next weekend. I knew, emotionally, we may be a little bit tired,” Ashworth said. “I said, ‘this is going to be a tougher match than it need[s] to be.’”
Singles did not go as smoothly as the Blue Devils (16-2, 8-0 in the ACC) would have liked, with the Mustangs making a comeback when Duke was up 3-0 overall to make it 3-2, which forced Coleman to a third set on court five.
Freshman Ava Krug was key in getting Duke a 2-0 lead as the rest of her teammates hit second-set slumps. Krug defeated SMU’s Caroline McGinely 6-2, 6-1 and never trailed. Sophomore Eleana Yu also stepped up for the Blue Devils as she closed out court 3 6-2, 6-0, winning 11 out of 12 games after being tied 1-1.
“Ava hasn’t played a lot of singles matches and to get out there and get a quick 2-0 lead was definitely helpful,” Ashworth said.
Even though Duke was leading 3-0, SMU (9-12, 3-7 in the ACC) did register two points on the board, as Hovde and sophomore Shavit Kimchi fell in two sets each. Hovde, on court one, put up quite the fight in her second set after losing the first 3-6. Down 0-2, she was able to tie the match up at 3-3, 4-4 and 5-5, but surrendered a service game and fell 5-7. After a first set tied at 3-3, Kimchi was playing catch-up the rest of the match as she consistently found herself down a break. She ultimately snapped a six-game winning streak with a 3-6, 4-6 loss.
Coleman, losing her first and winning her second, pushed her match to a third set. So Jackson had the opportunity to stop Duke’s singles slide and cut the match short as she found herself tied 5-5 in the second set on the heels of a 6-3 first-set victory. Jackson battled to stop her match from being sent to a third as well. Holding serve and breaking SMU with a key deuce point rally, she sealed the match for Duke 6-3, 7-5.
“I really just stuck to my game and I wanted to close it out for my teammates. I looked at the score and realized it came down to my court and I wanted to win it for my teammates,” Jackson said.
When the match was clinched, Coleman was leading 3-0 in the third set on court five.
“I said this was going to be a tougher match than it needed to be, but we dug deep in singles – we had to,” Ashworth said. “Anytime you can win in this conference is good.”
Duke will hope to continue its undefeated conference winning streak next weekend as the Blue Devils travel to sunny California for matches April 4 and 5.
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