Ohio State's Robert Cash, JJ Tracy win NCAA Doubles Championship
Robert Cash, the all-time winningest doubles player in Ohio State men’s tennis history, found himself in the spot he was in two years ago.
That’s when he and Matej Vocel lost the 2022 NCAA Doubles Championship on a third-set super-breaker.
Cash avenged that Orlando, Florida, defeat in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Saturday. And he did so alongside JJ Tracy against Florida State’s Antoine Cornut-Chauvinc and Joshua Dous Karpenschif.
Together, Cash and Tracy jumped out to a 4-1 super-breaker advantage and didn’t look back. Cash secured the championship point with a volley at the net.
So after dropping the first set, 7-5, a 6-0 sweep in the second set and a 10-6 triumph in the super-breaker sealed the deal for the Ohio State duo.
In the process, Cash and Tracy became Ohio State’s third-ever national championship doubles pairing, including the Buckeyes’ second in a row. Last year, Andrew Lutschaunig and James Trotter earned that honor.
FSU’s Cornut-Chauvinc and Dous Karpenschif tipped the scale in the first set by breaking Ohio State’s serve after a back-and-forth start to the match. Tracy and Cash, however, answered by breaking FSU’s first two service games of the subsequent set. A 4-0 lead turned into a 6-0 set win for the Buckeyes.
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Then came the super-breaker. Again, early service breaks propelled Ohio State’s Cash and Tracy.
The duo capped their doubles title against FSU’s Cornut-Chauvinc and Dous Karpenschif. But Cash and Tracy’s championship run began with a 6-4, 6-2 defeat of SMU’s Huntley Allen and Adam Neff. After that, the Buckeyes tandem downed Auburn’s Raul Dobai and Finn Murgett 6-2, 6-2.
When it came to the quarterfinals, Cash and Tracy took care of Arkansas’ Bozo Barun and Jared Horwood 6-3, 6-1. But, like Saturday’s final, Friday’s semifinal could have gone either way. Louisville’s Natan Rodrigues and Etienne Donnet responded to a 6-2 opening-set loss with a 6-4 second-set win. What’s more, the super-breaker was so close that Cash and Tracy only escaped with a 12-10 victory.
Both in their final seasons, Cash and Tracy went out on top in doubles play.
Tracy posted a combined 77-12 record this year. A singles All-America honoree for the second time in his Buckeyes career, he rounded out his time at Ohio State with 235 career wins, the fifth most in program history.
Cash, meanwhile, had already cemented himself atop the Buckeyes’ leaderboard with 139 doubles wins earlier this spring. Now he has 148 such victories to his name, plus a national championship. He was 35-7 in doubles competition this year. Cash also ranks top 10 in program history with 228 career wins.
Although both Cash and Tracy fell short of a team national title — as Ohio State bowed out to eventual champion TCU in the NCAA Tournament semifinals — they will always have their 2024 NCAA Doubles Championship.
