The Wisconsin women’s tennis team defeated Northern Illinois and Colorado this weekend to claim a pair of wins as their home season kicked off. Sweeping the NIU Huskies 7-0 Friday and squeaking past the Colorado Buffaloes 4-3 Saturday, the Badgers laid claim to a perfect season-opening record of 2-0, while also managing to see their doubles game off to an unblemished start, claiming all six matches over the two-day frame.
“It feels good to come out of the weekend 2-0,” head coach Patti Henderson said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s 4-3 or 7-0. A win is a win.”
Friday’s tournament pitting the Badgers against the Huskies lent the team an ideal start, as Wisconsin managed to claim every set of play, with NIU never putting more than three games on the board before folding. True freshman Chelsea Nusslock, working out of the No. 6 flight, posted the most impressive scores of the day, defeating the Huskies’ Megan Brooks, 6-0, 6-0. Nusslock would go on to also post a robust Saturday tally as well, winning 6-1, 6-0 over Colorado’s Gleisy Torres Torres.
The doubles team of Nicole Beck and Caitlin Burke (No. 99 individually) also proved robust Friday, ceding but a single game as they handled Cassie Drake and Daniela Martinez 8-1.
Badgers’ top seed Katie McGaffigan (No. 53) started the weekend promisingly, defeating Drake in singles play, 6-2, 6-1.
“I hadn’t been playing well before,” McGaffigan said after the match. “Parts of my game were coming together today.”
But Saturday handed McGaffigan her first loss of the season, as she fell to the Buffaloes’ Kendra Strandemo, 6-3, 7-5.
Burke, who only dropped one game in the Friday competition, proved spotless Saturday working out of the No. 2 flight, defeating Jessica Vanderdys 6-0, 6-0 in the day’s only perfect match.
“I started off pretty well,” Burke said of her Saturday performance. “I think the doubles match started off tough and strong, so it got me pretty ready for singles.”
Redshirt freshman Nicole Beck enjoyed one of the weekend’s more contentious matches, defeating NIU’s Dora Delgadillo Friday in play partially unsupervised by an umpire. Despite a spate of questionable calls made by Delgadillo, Beck managed to claim the first set before the second set was temporarily paused while the women and a then-present umpire took care to debate the score. Delgadillo claimed to have won a game that Beck contended to be tied at deuce.
Beck ultimately prevailed in the argument and the match, 6-3, 6-0, never losing a game after the confrontation.
“Quite a few [calls were] suspect,” Beck said of the incident. “I tried to keep it down, and [then] she tried to change the score.”
Beck’s Saturday match split sets, 4-6, 7-5 before skipping the third frame and going straight to a tiebreak because the tournament had already been clinched for Wisconsin. Despite losing the tiebreak, 10-7, post-game focus remained largely on the second set, which saw six of the last seven games yield a broken serve.
“Most of that’s nerves … we both have good serves; she has a really good slice serve,” Beck said of opponent Martina Sedevic, adding, “That was a huge factor, because for me to finally hold serve in the second set was like breaking someone’s serve in real ways of thinking.”
Led by the No. 27-ranked team of Lindsay Martin and McGaffigan, the Badgers swept their way to the doubles point both days. Though Friday’s play yielded NIU fewer game victories than Saturday’s showdown with Colorado, Henderson was excited by the teams’ performances against the Buffaloes.
“Yesterday I felt like we started out in our doubles a little bit slower, and today, across the board, in our doubles we started out really very good,” Henderson said. “We started off playing well, playing aggressively … that was one of the things we wanted to turn around from yesterday’s match, and they did that.”
Starting Thursday, the Badgers will host the 2005 USTA/ITA National Indoor Tennis Championship, which will span four days at the Nielson Tennis Stadium, site of this weekend’s play.
