CHAPEL HILL — After losing three of their past four ACC matches, the Blue Devils earned a much-needed win.
No. 20 Duke defeated rival North Carolina 4-0 Saturday afternoon to cap off the regular season. Despite trailing early in multiple singles matches, the Blue Devils used strong second-set play to clinch the win. Senior Connor Krug, junior Pedro Rodenas and sophomore Cooper Williams earned singles victories.
“Great team win … always a tough place to play, and they played well,” head coach Ramsey Smith said. “Singles was just an absolute battle … It ended up 4-0, but that's a deceptive score.”
All three doubles courts stayed on serve for the first three games, and both sides played high-energy tennis in the rivalry atmosphere. The first crack came on court three, where the red-hot Gerard Planelles Ripoll and Remy Dugardin looked for their seventh straight win, excluding unfinished matches.
Ripoll was in a forehand rally with the Tar Heels, and the Spaniard eventually charged the net and hit an overhead shot to get the break.
The next break on either of the top two courts didn’t come until a critical deuce point on court two. Duke’s Andreja Petrovic slapped some elite groundstrokes against North Carolina’s Diego Jarry and Anthony Wright, forcing a volley error and giving his team a 5-4 lead. Petrovic then served the set out 6-4, the first win of the match.
The other two courts saw the Blue Devils leading 5-4 with the Tar Heels serving — having broken back on court three.
Dugardin and Planelles Ripoll worked their way from down 30-40 to hold at 6-5. The former hit two powerful overheads and earned a high-five from his head coach, and in the next game, the latter fired off back-to-back quality returns to give Duke three set points. Dugardin finished it off to charge into the singles with a 1-0 lead.
“They have great chemistry,” Smith said of Planelles Ripoll and Dugardin. “There's the righty-lefty combination, two different game styles, so we can get their forehands in the middle of the court the way we have them positioned. And they also just really have a lot of fun out there.”
In the singles rounds, the Tar Heels seemed to snatch back any momentum the Blue Devils had, taking early leads on five of the six courts. That has been a theme of the season thus far for Duke; winning the double point but struggling in singles.
Twins Connor and Jake Krug dropped the first sets on courts five and six, and Rodenas lost 6-4 on court one.
However, Andreja Petrovic and Remy Dugardin broke back on courts three and four, respectively. Petrovic — the Florida State transfer — got another break with an elite passing shot.
Dugardin worked his way back to a set point on deuce; after a long backhand rally, he set himself up nicely for an inside-out forehand winner to win the point and set. While neither of the two players ended up finishing their matches, the fight from both was contagious across the team.
“I think what I'm most proud of is how we flipped so many matches,” Smith said. “So I think the resilience was there, and I think everyone sees that, and it just built some team momentum, even though we lost four first sets.”
The Krug twins both came back with a vengeance. Just as quickly as Connor Krug lost the first, he won the second 6-0, capped off by an exhausting rally and backhand pass shot. On the opposite side of the complex, a big serve by Jake Krug gave him a 6-1 set win. Smith called him the “hardest worker on the team,” and was proud of his ability to fight after “a really bad first set.”
“I think I started hitting my forehand a little better. I think I started dictating points, pushing him out to the backhand, and hitting the forehand a little more through and more penetrating,” Jake Krug said. “That, coupled with serving a little better, was the difference.”
The notable exception to the close matches was Williams, who breezed his way past Constantinos Djakouris 6-1, 6-1. Williams — who missed last week due to injury — has won his past five singles matches. Duke led 2-0.
In the third and final set, Connor Krug gave Duke its third point of the day, finishing off Jarry 6-3. It was a race to clinch between Jake Krug and Rodenas, who, after dropping the first set 6-4, had the second and third sets in his control.
In the end it was Rodenas, who served his match out to win 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. The Madrid native celebrated by counting the four Blue Devil wins on his fingers, and he ran into the awaiting arms of his teammates.
Duke is the No. 7 seed in the ACC Championship and will face the winner of No. 10-seed Miami and No. 15-seed Notre Dame Thursday at 6 p.m.
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Ranjan Jindal is a Trinity junior and sports editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.