(This is the seventh part in a series of features on Baylor Athletics' 25 for 25, which honors Baylor's top 25 athletes in the 25-year history of the Big 12 Conference (1996-21). Selected by a panel of Baylor experts, the final list was picked from a pool of over 100 candidates that came from all 19 intercollegiate sports that the school offers. Over the next couple of months, two honorees per week will be released and will also be featured during game broadcasts on the Baylor Sports Network from Learfield IMG College.)
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
For someone who never even planned on coming to the U.S. to play collegiately, Benedikt Dorsch became one of the best tennis players in NCAA history and had arguably the best three-year run of any Baylor student-athlete.
A three-time All-American in both singles and doubles, Dorsch was the 2005 NCAA singles champion, also won the 2002 National Intercollegiate Indoor Championship and led Baylor to the 2004 NCAA team title and 2005 ITA National Team Indoor championship.
Inducted into the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame in 2015, Dorsch was part of teams that won 93 of 98 matches, swept the Big 12 regular-season and tournament titles and made it to the Final Four three times.
"Going into a season, you always set your goals," Dorsch said of the 2004 season, when the Bears finished 32-2 and defeated UCLA, 4-0, to win the school's first national championship in any team sport.
"Our goal that year was just to be in the process of being the best we could be at the end. That was the mentality that we approached the season. And it happened to be that way, that we got better over the course of the season as a team and obviously as individuals, and we came together at the right moment."
In the historic championship run, Dorsch was dominant at the top of the singles lineup, including a straight-set win over third-ranked Jeremy Wurtzman in a 4-0 sweep of Ohio State in the quarterfinals.
The next year, Baylor lost to UCLA, 4-3, in a rematch of the 2004 championship match. Dorsch defeated seventh-ranked Luben Pampoulov at No. 1 singles, but the Bears (33-1) lost three-setters at Nos. 3, 5 and 6 in seeing their 57-match winning streak snapped.
"You never know what's going to happen in a dual match," Dorsch said. "But the circumstances, how we lost, was tougher than the loss itself. We were up 3-1, and we were dominating those three singles matches. Every match was close, and we thought we had a really good chance to win all of them. And you end up not winning any of them."
Sixteen years later, he still holds the single-season record for singles victories (49, 2002-03) and ranks No. 1 in singles winning percentage (.888, 119-15), fourth in singles wins (119) and eighth in doubles victories (83).
Graduating from Baylor with a 3.5 GPA in finance, Dorsch reached the finals in four of his first five tournaments after turning pro and reached as high as No. 127 in the world in May 2009 before having to retire when he had to have surgery to repair a herniated disc in his back.
"The moment that was the toughest was when I was first diagnosed," he said. "Once I had some time to think about it and get used to the situation, it wasn't that bad anymore. You're 29, 30 years old, you're going to be out six or eight months, and it's a very, very long process to get back to the level where you are. It just seemed like a reasonable decision at the time."
After seven years with Hewlett Packard, Dorsch has been a strategic sales executive with Atos IT Solutions and Services since February 2017. Benedikt and his wife, Dr. Simone Dorsch, live in Munich, Germany, and have one child.
Previous:
Corey Coleman, Football (2013-15)
Whitney Canion Reichenstein, Softball (2009-14)
Trayvon Bromell, Men's T&F (2014-15)
Stacey Bowers-Smith, Women's T&F (1996-99)
Andrew Billings, Football (2013-15)
Benjamin Becker, Men's Tennis (2001-05)
