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Atas & Stokke Advances to Quarterfinals of NCAA Doubles Championships
5/26/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
Palo Alto, Calif. - Joey Atas and Jonathan Stokke won for the second straight day to advance to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Individual Doubles Championships at Taube Tennis Center in Palo Alto, Calif.
“My partner is absolutely obsessed with All-American, so he was really nervous, so I'm glad we won for him, and the team we played yesterday [Ohio State] is where he used to play,” said Stokke. “We didn't see it as an upset, which is maybe why we won. We were really confident that we were going to win and we're obviously really happy to be here, but now we want to see if we can win it.”
The Duke duo came out on top in a three-set match for the second straight day. Florida State's Ytai Abougzir and Chris Westerhof had defeated Atas and Stokke twice this season and got off to a great start, winning the first set 6-3. Atas and Stokke surged back to win handily in the second set, 6-1, and then take a 6-4 third-set win to take the match. The Duke pairing improve to 27-12 for the season and are 13-3 outside of dual match play.
“Yesterday was a big match because I was playing my old teammates and I was nervous about that, but it was a great match and everyone played well,” said Atas. “Today was just amazing. I don't know if we started off tight or whatnot, because we didn't play that well to start with but we just started playing really well at the end.”
Atas and Stokke move on to the quarterfinals where they will face Rafael Abreu and Jordan Freitas of Texas Christian University. Abreu and Freitas won a tiebreaker on the third set of their match against against Virginia's Nick Meythaler and Rylan Rizza to advance. The final score of the match was 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (5).
“We feel really confident going into tomorrow because we've won two good matches,” said Atas. “We beat the No. 1 seeds and then we beat a team just now [Florida State] that has beaten us twice this year.”
Senior Ludovic Walter saw his career at Duke come to an end with a straight-set loss to Virginia's Somdev Devvarman on Friday. Devvarman upset Walter, the fifth seed in the tournament, 6-2, 6-3 to advance to the quarterfinals. Walter finishes his career as the school record holder for singles wins with 129 victories. He concluded his senior season with a 32-12 overall record in singles. Devvarman will move on to face Sheeva Parbhu of Notre Dame in the quarterfinals.
Play will continue on Saturday on the campus of Stanford University. Action will begin at 12 p.m. at the Taube Tennis Center. The semifinals for singles and doubles will take place on Sunday with the championships to be held on Monday.
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