She’s back.
One week after playing like a shadow of her usual self, No. 13 junior Cristelle Grier returned to her winning ways as the No. 4 Wildcats (10-1, 1-0 Big Ten) defeated No. 13 Texas on Sunday, 5-2.
Grier reaffirmed she’s one of the best players in the country by dominating the Longhorns’ Kendra Strohm, 6-0, 6-1. Grier dropped a Feb. 19 match against North Carolina in which she held a 5-3 lead both sets and barely pulled out a victory a day later against Duke. Against Strohm, Grier made every shot and every return with ease, dispatching her opponent while the rest of her teammates were barely finishing their first set.
“I think I was just a little peeved at how I’d been playing recently,” Grier said. “I had just been working really hard this week and was really determined to come out and put that into effect (Sunday).”
Grier’s return to form first became evident on the doubles court where she and No. 1 freshman Audra Cohen beat up No. 26 tandem of Strohm and Katie Ruckert, 8-2. The win was crucial to the doubles point since the Cats split the other two matches.
The doubles point was clinched when the No. 18 duo of sophomore Alexis Prousis and senior Kristi Roemer grinded out a 9-7 win over Petra Dizdar and Mia Marovic. Prousis and Roemer dropped the first three games of the match, but stormed back to take a 7-4 advantage. The Longhorns tied the match 7-7 before Prousis and Roemer finally pulled away.
“I guess you just have to stay focused, and ride the ups and downs of the match,” Prousis said. “We did a good job with that, and that’s why we won.”
In the third doubles match, junior Jamie Peisel and grad student Valerie Vladea, who held a 7-6 lead after trading games throughout the set, failed to close out the last game and lost a tiebreaker. They fell to Courtney Zauft and Kelly Baritot, 8-7 (7-5).
NU took four of the six singles matches to seal the win, but the match was not without tension. After Grier’s victory, Zauft and Ristine Olsen knocked off Peisel and junior Feriel Esseghir to draw the Longhorns even at 2-2.
Cohen gave NU the lead with a win over Dizdar. Dizdar had stirred up thoughts of an upset in the first set by taking three straight games after falling behind 5-1, but Cohen finished the first set and took the second one for a 6-4, 6-3 win.
“She started to make a few more balls in the court,” Cohen said. “I didn’t serve as well in my service game and I didn’t break back. It was really just one break, but still to be up so dominantly and make it be so close, it’s tough. But it was a good service game at 5-4.”
The Cats clinched the match when Vladea won a second-set tiebreaker to beat Marovic, 6-2, 7-6 (7-3). Prousis also won a close one against Ruckert, 6-3, 7-5.
While the win was certainly a team effort for NU, Grier’s return to dominance was the highlight of the weekend.
“When things aren’t going well, it’s OK, but you roll up your sleeves,” Pollard said. “There’s no easy solution. I told the girls if there was a magic wand, I would have purchased it a long time ago to wave off all our problems…She looked like as great a player as there is in college tennis.”
Reach David Kalan at [email protected].
