Florida had been in this situation before.
The Gators were playing No. 13 Tennessee on April 20 in the semifinals of the SEC Tournament. As the host and the best team in the SEC during the regular season, Florida was expected to roll through the tournament on its way to a potential national title.
Going into the semifinals, the Volunteers seemed like they would be easy prey for the Gators. Florida dominated them 5-2 in Knoxville in the prior meeting on March 17.
Early on, those expectations seemed to hold true. UF was ahead 3-2 and was one point away from a spot in the SEC finals. Florida faltered, however, as star freshman Sam Riffice and sophomore Andy Andrade blew big leads and Tennessee took the match.
Flash forward to May 11. It’s the NCAA Tournament Round of 16; a spot in the quarterfinals in Orlando was on the line, and Florida was playing the Volunteers again. The score and the setting were the same as that day in April, with Florida ahead 3-2 at the Ring Tennis Complex in Gainesville.
The Gators had put themselves in a great situation, one point away from clinching the victory.
On Court 1, Oliver Crawford was tied 4-4 in the third set and on Court 5, sophomore Duarte Vale and Tennessee’s Preston Touliatos were in a third-set tiebreaker.
This was supposed to be an easy match for Vale. He was ranked No. 90 and was 14-1 in singles on the season. Plus, he had beaten Touliatos easily in two sets during their match three weeks prior. But they still found themselves in a tiebreaker.
The pressure was on Vale.
If he lost this match (and Crawford lost his match on Court 1), No. 4 Florida’s magical season would end. If he won, the Gators would avenge their loss from three weeks prior. Vale was ahead 9-8 in the tiebreaker and serving.
Vale served. Touliatos hit it back, but he overshot the return.
Vale’s teammates jumped on top of him. It was pandemonium at the Ring.
But the story of Vale is far more than that of clincher. Over the course of 18 months, he went from a foreign-born highly touted recruit, to the bench, to starring on one of Florida’s best teams ever.
Vale is from Cascais, Portugal, a resort town on the Atlantic coast near Lisbon. His potential in tennis was realized before high school, and Vale came to IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, to train.
“I had great coaches and partners,” Vale said regarding his time at IMG. “Definitely raised my level a lot.”
Vale flourished at IMG. He reached as high as No. 14 in the International Tennis Federation’s junior rankings, the main ranking system for junior players. He also competed in seven junior grand slam events – including two Wimbledons – and went 6-1 in the 2016 European Summer Cup as Portugal’s No. 1 player, leading his country to the final round.
In doubles, he won the ITF Grade 1 Copa Barranquilla, a top junior event, in 2016. His partner was Andrade, his future college teammate. The two became friends and began to think about their future and where they would play.
Andrade says they both knew they would come to UF early on.
“We had talked about it back in high school that we wanted to go to college together and when we visited here, we were like, ‘we have to go here,’ and it just worked out.”
Vale signed his letter of intent in Nov. 2016 and came to Florida before the 2017-18 season.
Given his junior success, he came in with high expectations and lived up to them. He went 8-2 in singles and 9-1 in doubles in his freshman fall. He won the Gator Ranked +1 Tournament in singles and doubles and advanced to the semifinals of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association All-American Championships in doubles. By November 2017, he was ranked No. 39 in singles, which is rare for a freshman.
He was confident and saw himself as an integral piece on a team that was going to compete for a championship.
“I wanted to be one of the best players in college right away and after the fall I was one of the highest-ranked freshmen, so I started to put a lot of pressure on myself,” Vale said.
That pressure started to get to him. He began the spring well, going 2-1, but then lost two in a row and his ranking slipped to No. 59 by February 2018. He won his next match against Tennessee, but lost three consecutive after that. By March, he was out of the rankings. A player who just four months earlier was top 40 in the country was now out of the top 100.
With each loss, Duarte’s confidence fell lower and lower.
“I wanted to have a very good season, not just an average season, and after every match I lost I would focus on all the wrong things. You shouldn’t ever think about the end result; you should just take it day-by-day,” Vale said.
Vale recovered to win his last two singles matches of the season, but it was too little, too late. After his win over Wake Forest on April 2, he was benched and didn’t play in singles the rest of the season. He watched on the sideline as Florida fell to Texas A&M in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament. He finished the season with a record of 5-11 in dual singles.
For coach Bryan Shelton, the 2018 season said a lot about Vale’s drive for the game.
“He was trying to do everything in his power to improve. He was reaching and clawing to find the answers and you got to applaud a kid who doesn’t just sit around saying ‘poor me.’ He is actually on the practice court longer and working harder,” Shelton said.
The coaching staff tried to reset him throughout the season, but Shelton said he just needed a break.
That break finally came last summer. Vale returned to the shores of Portugal, and while he did spend the hot days improving his game physically, he knew most of the change had to happen in his head.
He arrived back in Gainesville in August with a new mindset.
“I was really confident. I knew this season was going to be different and I had control of my problems and I put myself in a good situation to be successful, like feeling good mentally.”
With highly praised freshmen like Lukas Greif and Riffice coming in, the Gators once again had championship aspirations. They entered the 2018-19 season ranked No. 4 in the nation.
He started 2018 with an average fall season that carried over into the spring. In his first five matches of the spring season, he had won twice, lost once and had two matches unfinished. He once again fell out of the ITA rankings after starting the season ranked No. 57.
It seemed as if all that work put in the offseason to avoid this from happening again would go nowhere.
But then, he went on a run and didn’t lose a singles match for the rest of the season. He won 13 straight singles matches and helped the Gators knock off top-10 teams like Mississippi State and Texas A&M.
The win over the Aggies on March 31 helped clinch the SEC regular season title for the Gators, but it also carried a special meaning for Duarte and the rest of the team: Texas A&M had beaten them in the Elite Eight in 2018. Vale said that victory was his favorite moment all season.
His teammates and coaches were quick to notice the changes he made in 2019.
“I think this season he’s a lot more positive,” Andrade said. “Last season he had a pretty rough time and now all the hard work he puts in is paying off.”
“From last season to this season, his maturity has grown a lot,” senior McClain Kessler, Vale’s doubles partner said. “He had all that pressure and now he is just enjoying the game.”
Much of this success came with Vale playing on the back courts. Most players don’t like playing on the back courts, Vale said, considering you don’t attract the attention that comes with playing on the front courts.
Vale turned it to a positive.
“It gave me room to reset. To remember what it feels like and get my swagger back.”
The clinching win over Tennessee ended up being his last memory on the singles court this season. Shelton decided not to put him in the singles lineup in the quarterfinals when Florida beat No. 6 Baylor 4-0 to advance to its first Final Four since 2005 or when the season ended with a 4-2 loss to No. 2 Texas in the Final Four. Overall, he finished the season with a remarkable record of 15-1 in dual singles, a 10-win turnaround from last season.
“He was more receptive to coaching this season,” Shelton said. “He is more willing to make the adjustments quicker when things aren’t working.”
One of the biggest changes this season was how seriously Vale took the results. He knew that to be successful, he had to enjoy his time spent off the court.
“When he’s on the court, he’s all business, but when he’s off the court, he is a giant goofball,” Kessler said. “He is always putting a smile on people’s faces.”
Vale just finished his sophomore season, so he still has another two years of eligibility. It will be a challenge to improve after such a successful season, but Shelton knows it’ll happen.
“His future is bright. I think he is going to continue to build. There are certain guys who peak after realizing they won’t play professional tennis, but Duarte is a guy who will always be at his best every single day.”
Follow Noah Ram on Twitter @noah_ram1. Contact him at nram@alligator.org.
Duarte Vale had a breakout year in 2019, going 15-1 in dual singles play.
Noah is a third year journalism-sports and media student from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. He has been with The Alligator since Spring 2019 and has covered men’s and women’s tennis, gymnastics and volleyball. When he isn’t on his beat, Noah is usually sadden over his beloved South Florida sports teams, such as the Heat and Dolphins.
