When Claudia Hirt is in the middle of a match, she focuses on her match and her match only.
It was this steely, single-minded focus that enabled Hirt to engineer a comeback victory after she lost the first set 7-6 (7-3) in her three-set, two-hour-long epic battle against Texas Tech’s Maria Jose Andres on Friday night.
It was also this steely, single-minded focus that resulted in Hirt walking off the tennis court after her win, convinced that the Ducks had lost a match that they had actually won.
No. 42 Oregon and 54th-ranked Texas Tech played for six-and-a-half hours at Lubbock Country Club in Lubbock, Texas on Friday night.
The Ducks narrowly secured the doubles point, with Dominika Dieskova and Ceci Olivos edging past Anne Sophie Fankam and Lakann Wagley 9-8 (7-1), and Monica Hoz de Vila and Anna Powaska defeating Andres and Janet Durham 9-8 (8-6).
Olivos won her singles match against Wagley 6-4, 6-2, and Powaska beat Fankam 6-1, 4-6, 6-4. But both Carmen Seremeta and Monica Hoz de Vila lost their three-set matches, and at 11 p.m. the score was still deadlocked at 3-3, until Hirt’s eventual 7-6 (7-3), 6-4, 6-2 win over Andres won the Ducks the match.
The knowledge that she was the last Duck left on the court never became a source of nervousness for Hirt because she had assumed that the Ducks were already behind 4-2, and that her match would not make a difference anyway.
“Claudia didn’t find out till later that we had won,” Oregon coach Paul Reber said, with the rest of the Ducks gathered around him trying to contain their laughter. “We rode home and she still didn’t know. We had some food at the hotel and she still didn’t know.”
It never occurred to Hirt that it might be unusual for the team to be in good spirits even though they had just “lost” a close match.
“We played well and everything so I figured it’s okay, we’re all in a good mood and we’re happy even though we lost, so it’s okay,” Hirt said.
Hirt only discovered the truth later that night when she was in her hotel room chatting with Dieskova before bed.
“I was like ‘It’s great that we won today, it was an important 4-3 match,’” Dieskova said, laughing.
“And I said, ‘No, no Domcha, we lost,’” Hirt cut in, with a sheepish glance at all her teammates who were almost doubled over in laughter. “She kept trying to convince me that we’d won, and I didn’t believe her, and when I finally found out, I was like, ‘Oh, cool.’” “She was so focused on her match that she wasn’t thinking about what was going on around her,” Reber said, grinning.
The Oregon women (4-0 overall) also won their second match of the weekend when they beat 44th-ranked Alabama 6-1 on Saturday.
The Oregon men’s tennis team saw moderate success at home over the weekend. The Ducks (3-1 overall) came out fighting in the first match of their triple header when they shut out Gonzaga 7-0 Friday night.
The men won all six of their singles matches in straight sets, and the only Oregon doubles team that the Bulldogs managed to challenge was the No. 2 duo of Ric Mortera and Marco Verdasco, who pulled off a narrow 9-7 victory over Roman Dojcak and Zach Radetzky.
On Saturday, the men’s luck waned. Oregon failed to secure the doubles point, and despite singles wins by Mortera, Geoff Embry and Mike Myrhed, Nevada-Reno eventually triumphed 4-3.
But the young Oregon team proved its resilience when it came out fighting later that day against Idaho. This time, the Ducks took the doubles point, then proceeded to overrun the Vandals in singles, with five players winning in straight sets.
Playing in the No. 2 singles position, Oregon freshman Verdasco took an early dominating lead over Idaho’s Stas Glukhov when he claimed the first set 6-0. But even with Verdasco up 3-0 in the second set, a very determined Glukhov fought his way back and Verdasco eventually succumbed in the tiebreaker 6-0, 4-6 (10-7).
“That last set was my worst set in my life,” Verdasco said. “I’ve never played worse than today. (I think I was) maybe thinking too much about closing the match. It was so easy: 6-0, then 3-0, then 4-2. Then, I don’t know.
“I just started to pull the ball, and started to miss the ball, and he started to play better and broke me a couple of times and took the set.”
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