Georgia
No. 1-seed Duke women’s tennis defeats Georgia Tech 4-1 in ACC Tournament quarterfinals
CARY — It was either one or the other. Fans swiveled their heads in anticipation of who would clinch the match.
The contest was between Duke’s freshmen, Liv Hovde and Irina Balus, each just a point away on courts one and two. This time, under the cloudless Cary sky, Balus pushed the Blue Devils into the semifinals of the ACC Tournament. The Blue Devils defeated the Yellow Jackets 4-1 as the Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, native shook hands with Georgia Tech’s Alejandra Cruz after her first match-clinching win.
“I knew I just had to keep fighting, play aggressive and that moment [would] come where the match is going to turn around,” Balus said. “So I was waiting for that moment. It came at 4-all in the second set, and then I would say the momentum went into my favor.”
Once Balus reached that inflection point in the match, she squashed her Yellow Jacket opponent. Breaking Cruz in the first game, Balus took two deuce points and five straight games, winning 6-1.
On court one, Hovde’s match against Scarlett Nicholson, also a three-set thriller, ended unfinished, almost adding another top-25 win to the Duke freshman’s resumé. In an extremely close first set, the Daniel Island, S.C., native edged a 7-6 tiebreak victory, fighting in prolonged rallies. Hovde’s drop shots forced Nicholson out of position, opening opportunities to place volleys out her reach. Nicholson responded in the second 6-4, even going up 3-1 in the third, but Hovde put on a clinic, winning four-straight games.
“That was some of the best tennis she has played all year,” Ashworth said about Hovde. “Irina came through huge from the middle of the second set all the way through that third set. We need both of them to accomplish the goals this team wants to accomplish.”
The rest of the singles matches were also close, reminiscent of Duke’s 4-3 victory in Atlanta. Eleana Yu was on the opposite end of a first-set tiebreaker. She found momentum in the second set 6-3, and led in the third before the clinch.
Ellie Coleman, the rock of the Blue Devils, cruised to 6-2, 6-3 win to offset Shavit Kimchi’s 6-3, 6-2 loss. Meanwhile, Emma Jackson battled against Kate Sharabura in two close sets, ending victorious 7-5 and 6-4. Sharabura’s height caused problems for Jackson’s lob shots, but the La Grange Park, Ill., native found alternate ways to success. Jackson secured four straight games in the second set through strong serves — indicated by 68% total serve points won — and rounding to her forehand to place it out of reach of Sharabura.
“When it gets close, I don’t think there is any doubt in their mind. They just play, keep playing and keep fighting,” Ashworth said. “I thought they did a good job of not relying on their teammates and they just went out and played tennis. Georgia Tech is a good team and has given us trouble in the past.”
In doubles, the Jackson-Hovde pairing avenged their only loss to a different Yellow Jacket tandem with a dominant 6-1 victory, moving to 13-1 the season. Balus and Coleman came through for the Blue Devils once again to clinch the doubles point 2-1.
The Blue Devils will now face a familiar opponent in No. 4-seed Virginia. Duke fell to the Cavaliers 4-3 at the ITA Kickoff Weekend. A much different team than in February, Duke looks to extend its win streak to 17.
“I think we just have to come out and play with confidence and play with no fear,” Ashworth said.
“We’ve had a great season so far,” Balus said. “Each of us want to fight for each other, especially for Emma and Ellie, we want to make a great senior year for them and win this.”
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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