Baylor's Dorsch Takes NCAA Singles Title; Georgia's Isner and Ruiz Capture Doubles Crown

©Colette Lewis 2005--
College Station TX--

Benedikt Dorsch of Baylor and John Isner of Georgia both made the most of their encore visits to the finals Monday at the NCAA Men’s Division 1 tennis championships on the campus of Texas A & M University.

The top-seeded Dorsch overcame a stubborn Patrick Ysern of San Diego, 6-2, 7-6 (6), to emerge as champion two years after losing to Illinois’ Amer Delic in the finals.

And Georgia’s John Isner, a doubles finalist last year with Bo Hodge, this year teamed with Antonio Ruiz to capture the 2005 title, posting a 7-6 (4), 7-5 triumph over Louisiana State’s Mark Growcott and Ken Skupski.

For Dorsch, still stung by Baylor’s surprising loss to UCLA in the team finals, the individual championship helped ease the pain.

“We were all smashed that we lost that match,” said Dorsch, echoing the comments teammate and defending NCAA champion Benjamin Becker made after his singles loss in the round of 16.

“When you are up 3-1 and lose three matches in the third….it’s tough, but it’s not like we played badly, we just got outplayed. And you’ve got to accept that.”

It looked as if Ysern, a junior from Paris, France, would have to accept a straight set loss, when Dorsch bolted to a 4-0 lead in the first set, and despite dropping his own serve once, took it 6-2.



“I was making errors that I don’t usually do,” said Ysern, a five-foot nine-inch lefthander. “You’ve got to adapt when you miss shots you don’t usually miss.”

His crosscourt forehand and backhand slice, so reliable in previous matches, were anything but in the first set and Ysern readily admitted that nerves played a role.

“At the beginning I was really nervous, and after the first set, you know you’ve got to do something different. I kind of went a little more for my shots. I knew it was there, I just had to try and find it.”

When Dorsch went up a break in the second, and stepped to the baseline to serve out the match at 5-4, Ysern found whatever it was he was looking for. Dorsch never got to match point, and three unforced errors later it was 5-5, demonstrating that Ysern wasn’t alone in feeling the tension of the occasion.

But when Dorsch ran out to a 6-1 lead in the ensuing tiebreaker, things got really interesting.

Ysern saved the first match point with a volley winner, the second with a drop shot winner, the third with a forehand winner, the fourth with a backhand down the line. And with each match point saved, the crowd,--evenly divided between Baylor supporters an underdog partisans-- either roared or gasped, depending on their allegiance.

But all that was prelude. At 5-6, Ysern, pushed far beyond baseline by Dorsch’s pace, hit a sharply angled forehand crosscourt that Dorsch, at net and expecting to put away an easy volley, could only gape at in disbelief.

Ysern, falling as he hit the shot, stayed down to celebrate, getting up only to change ends for point number 13.

“The most ridiculous shot in tennis I’ve ever seen, honestly, “ said Dorsch afterward.

“I don’t even know what I was thinking,” said Ysern when asked how he felt after that winner. “I was on a different planet. But I like going for those shots. I’m trying to have fun out there.”

The good times, and the match, ended two points later, when Dorsch finally coaxed two errors from Ysern, taking the tiebreaker 8-6. But Dorsch knew he had dodged a bullet.

“The guy made some unbelievable shots,“ said the five-foot ten-inch senior from Weiden Germany. “I was fortunate to get through it in two sets. He was down a break when I was serving for it, he was down 6-1, and there’s not a whole lot of guys who would keep playing. He tried everything and as hard as he could on every point.”

For Dorsch, whose strength and conditioning are givens, it was a relief to finish it in two sets.

“When you play twelve points at that level, with that intensity and with that much at stake, it gets to the point where it gets very physical. It’s very warm outside and humid. I’ve played a lot of tennis in the last ten or eleven days. It’s good to be finishing on a high note.”

Dorsch, who ends his collegiate career with an eye-popping 119-15 won/loss record, joins fellow Baylor Bear Zuzana Zemenova in the NCAA singles champion’s circle. Zemenova, a freshman from Slovakia, captured the women’s title in Athens, GA on Saturday.

The singles finalists had never faced one another before, but the doubles teams vying for the 2005 NCAA title have spent plenty of time across the net from each other.

When Georgia’s John Isner and Antonio Ruiz, the nation’s top ranked doubles team, faced Louisiana State’s Mark Growcott and Ken Skupski, it was the fourth time this season the SEC rivals had met, and the second time this month.

Unfortunately for Growcott and Skupski, the first LSU pair ever to play in an NCAA final, Monday’s result was the same as the previous three—a win for the Bulldogs, this time by a 7-6 (4), 7-5 score.



Neither team could produce a break in the first set, but Growcott and Skupski, came close, returning well enough to earn two set points on Isner’s serve at 4-5. But the six-foot nine-inch sophomore cracked four aces, three of them in succession, to get out of that tight spot, and the British duo did not get another chance in the tiebreaker, as Growcott dropped both his serves at 1-2.

In the seventh game of the second set, Growcott and Skupski earned the first break of match on Ruiz’s serve, but Skupski immediately gave it back. Ruiz again struggled in his next service game, but held, and at 5-6, Skupski once again was broken, sailing a forehand long, and giving the University of Georgia its third NCAA doubles title.

Assessing the challenge of facing a player of Isner’s size, Skupski admitted that sometimes gambling is necessary.

“You’ve got to guess with him sometimes, if he’s serving well,” said the sophomore from Liverpool. “And he served well on the big points. The difference in a 7-6, 7-5 match, it one or two points, here or there.”



Isner, a sophomore, began the season breaking in a new partner, Antonio Ruiz, a transfer from Texas, was born in Monterrey Mexico. Undoubtedly it was a coveted position, as Isner had already demonstrated his doubles skills when he reached the 2004 finals with senior Bo Hodge.

“I was very disappointed last year,” said Isner, a native of Greensboro North Carolina. “My partner and I really didn’t play our best tennis, but we still almost came up with the win. To win it this year, makes me feel a lot better.”

And though Skupski and Growcott, the nation's sixth ranked team, were once again on the losing side of the ledger, there was only a tinge of frustration in Skupski’s voice when he said, “These guys are good. They deserved to win today.”

Isner, who won the USTA National Junior doubles title with Pramod Dabir in 2003, was magnanimous in victory.

“We’ve gotten to know these guys pretty well through out the year, and they are better guys off the court than on the court,” said Isner. “We couldn’t ask for a better team to play against in the finals.”