Aaron Carpenter- Sunrise at Sheffield

The hour long rallies of Kiril Dimitrov. Jared Pinsky effortlessly poaching off a return for a clean winner. The oddly disgusting taste of a mix of a Bruegger’s Bagel and a purple Gatorade in your mouth. “Ah”, I thought, “This is what Duke Tennis is all about.”

            Today was the first day of the Duke Invitational— a “hidden dual” round robin tournament that counts for only individual (not team) rankings and, more or less, gets the season started. It’s quite an event. Everyone on the team gets to play singles and doubles we’re all chomping at the bit to get out there to jockey for position and get match-tough. Our first round was against a team from just down I-40— The Elon Phoenix.

            It’s hard to find fault with the results. We lost one doubles match to a very “on”, line one team and only dropped a set in the singles, which is a good sign considering we play them in our opening home match on Thursday. Though I’m perfectly satisfied with the way I played, my match was a little too dramatic for my tastes.

            My opponent, Clark Howell, came out crushing forehands left and right, shocking me into a state where all I could do was try to get the ball back somewhere close to the backhand, try to keep my chin up, and hope for Andy Roddick’s soul to try to leave his body.

            My coach for the match, Mr. Josh Goffi, agreed. We sat at bench at 3-2 Elon in the first and discussed how things were going.

            “This guy’s playing well,” he opened.

            “ Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. Things just aren’t clicking right now, man. I don’t know if I’m playing a little tight or what. I just gotta get back into it, you know?”

            Anxiety was a little high. I was down a break for crissakes!

            “ Yeah… yeah… I think if you just make him hit, say, one more ball each rally this guy is gonna come crashing down pretty quick,” he prophesized. He was correct— ten games and a good deal more unforced errors on the opposite end of the court later, I was looking at Duke 6-3,6-0 on the scoreboard. Now I could just lie down on my bed, have dinner, and write this blog for the rest of the day.

            Other matches were more exciting and, I dare say, more expertly played. Reid battled it and won out against a ranked opponent at line one. Kiril clamped down and drowned his opponent in a never-ending barrage of topspin. Dylan hit the ball hard, unsurprisingly. Pinsky won his roller-coaster of a match and rewarded himself with a fresh chocolate chip cookie afterwards. Torsten proved German tennis is still alive. David Holland got a win against a great grinder. David Lue got through a tough first set to run away with the second and Luke Marchese had a win against an opponent who simply forgot how to miss a forehand. However, his greatest victory of the day was his highly inspirational and alarmingly “gangsta” warm-up CD, which gave us all more motivation than is perhaps healthy.

            Tomorrow we take on ETSU, which should be a very hard-fought match. A lot of us played them in the fall and had very good matches. We’ll keep you posted on how everything turns out from this tournament and the rest of the season.

Thanks for reading,
Aaron Carpenter