Dominika Dieskova of the Oregon women’s tennis team finished school the Tuesday of Finals Week and has spent the first part of her summer roaming the professional tennis circuit.
Dieskova, who was 30-12 in singles last season, has played in three professional tournaments in the last month. At the $10,000 Fort Worth, Texas, tournament, Dieskova fell to 17-year-old Ashley Weinhold 6-4, 6-4 in the first round of qualifiers and bowed out of the doubles after a similar first-round defeat.
Dieskova fared slightly better in the $10,000 Edmond, Okla., tournament where she made it to the final qualifying round before succumbing 3-6, 6-0, 6-7 (5-7) to Canadian Chantal Beetham.
However, the Edmond tournament was when Dieskova started picking up momentum in doubles. She paired with former Duck Courtney Nagle (Class of 2004) and they lost a close match to Weinhold and Alexa Glatch in the Round of 16.
Even though it had been a full year since Dieskova and Nagle last played doubles together, Dieskova said they didn’t have a problem picking up where they’d left off.
“Courtney and I, we just work. We’re very open to communication and our personalities are very
different,” Dieskova said. “I’m always looking ahead to the next point, while she often looks back to see what she could do better.
“She was joking the other day and she told me, ‘You look to the future, I look to the past. So together we’re in the present!’”
In the first round at Edmond, the Oregon pair stayed in the present long enough to take the first set 6-4. After trailing 2-5 in the second, they rallied to take a 6-5 lead. With Dieskova serving at 30-15, they appeared poised for victory.
Dieskova whipped out an ace that should have taken the score to match point at 40-15. But even as the crowd started up a lively round of applause, the linesman called the ball out.
“That ace would have given us two match points,” Dieskova said. “People were already clapping, and it was not even on the line, it was obviously inside the line.”
That point swung the momentum in favor of Weinhold and
Glatch, who pulled out a 6-4, 6-7 (8-6), 4-6 victory and went on to win the tournament.
But Dieskova and Nagle got to exact revenge at the next tournament in Southlake, Texas.
At the $10,000 Southlake, Nagle and Dieskova proved their
mettle as comeback queens as they battled their way through a tough doubles draw.
In the first round against Punam Reddy and Maureen Diaz, the Oregon pair came back from losing the first set 3-6, to eventually take the match 3-6, 6-2, 6-4.
Dieskova and Nagle were pitted against former NCAA singles No. 1 Audra Cohen and her Miami teammate Kristi Millerin the second round.
“We lost the first set 7-5, and were down 2-5 in the second,” Dieskova said. “During the changeover, I told Courtney ‘Well, I guess we’ve got nothing to lose now, so let’s just play to have fun.’”
That was the turning point of Dieskova and Nagle’s tournament.
The women rallied to win the second set 7-5, and then finished off the job with a comfortable 6-3 win in the third.
In the semifinals, the Ducks went up against Alicia Pillay and Tara Snyder, a seasoned player on the women’s pro tour, who was ranked 33rd in the world in singles in 1998.
Nagle and Dieskova defeated the more experienced pair in straight sets, 7-6, 6-2.
Defeat did not sit well with Snyder. Dieskova said Snyder trashed talk during the match, and tried to start a verbal altercation with her afterwards.
“I was actually very disappointed with her behavior on court,” Dieskova said. “She was being kind of disrespectful.”
“At one point, Courtney was serving and I was at the net and Snyder pointed at me and said, ‘I’m going to hit this ball right at you.’”
So after the match, when the pairs were at the net for the traditional post-match handshake, Dieskova told Snyder, “I think you should be more respectful to your opponent.”
Dieskova said that Snyder replied, “I don’t understand your broken English,” and told Nagle that she and Dieskova should “represent better.”
This annoyed the Slovakian-born Duck, but she ignored the comment.
“I speak four languages,” said Dieskova, looking half-amused. “I did not need to start the whole language thing with her.”
Dieskova said that Snyder refused to drop the issue, but loudly made snide comments with the implication that Dieskova’s style of aggressive tennis would not work “at a higher level.”
This ruffled the normally even-tempered Dieskova.
“I was like, ‘You just lost to the one whom you think will not get to a higher level. So what level are you at?’” Dieskova said, sounding incredulous. “She’s 33 years old, but she was acting like she was 13. I swear.”
Dieskova and Nagle went into the final round of the tournament fired up, and managed another three-set comeback victory against Weinhold and Jan Munch-Soegaard. Dieskova and Nagle won 2-6, 7-6, 6-3.