Cardinal Ends W. Tennis' Tourney Hopes

Despite putting forth a valiant effort, the No. 19 Harvard women’s tennis team hit the end of its playoff run yesterday, when it fell 4-0 to top-seeded Stanford in the Round of 16, held at the University of Georgia. The Crimson finished the season with a 19-7 overall record, while Stanford improved its record to 24-0 and increased its winning streak to 53 matches.

“Stanford came out really strong [and] played really aggressive tennis,” sophomore Preethi Mukundan said. “The players are known to be tough competitors.”

The Cardinal captured the doubles point in under an hour with victories in the No. 1 and No. 2 positions. Stanford’s Amber Liu and Anne Yelsey topped Harvard’s top pair of junior Melissa Anderson and freshman Celia Durkin, 8-3, and Alice Barnes and Erin Burdette defeated co-captain Courtney Bergman and sophomore Elsa O’Riain, 8-1, at the No. 2 spot.

In No. 3 doubles, co-captain Susanna Lingman and junior Eva Wang were down 6-4 against the Cardinal’s Whitney Deason and Lejla Hodzic when the match was suspended.

“It was a slow start on our side, [and] we had a few errors, but they played some really good doubles,” Mukundan said.

“We thought we had a good chance in doubles, and they came out pretty strong,” O’Riain added.

Though Harvard kept the matches close at the beginning of singles play, all but one of the Cardinal’s singles players took the first set of their matches against the Crimson. Shortly after, Stanford won the three matches it needed to advance to the quarterfinal.

Stanford took its first singles match—and the second match point—with a victory in the No. 2 spot. Barnes, who had taken her first set 6-1, was awarded the match when Durkin retired due to an Achilles heel sprain suffered in her doubles match. Durkin had trailed 3-0 before retiring.

Wang’s 6-3, 6-1 loss to Stanford’s Yelsey in the No. 6 position allowed the Cardinal to move one step closer to victory, which it achieved when Liu, who is ranked seventh in the nation, defeated Lingman by a score of 6-2, 6-3 in No. 1 singles.

Senior Alexis Martire played her first match of the tournament against Stanford’s Logar in the No. 4 position, and the former lost a close first set 6-4. She was down 5-3 in the second set when the match was called.

O’Riain won her first set in her No. 3 singles match against the Cardinal’s Burdette, 6-3, and was the lone Crimson player to win a set. Burdette led 5-4 in the second set when the match was suspended.

O’Riain felt her performance—as well as Martire’s—could have made things interesting had the other matches not been decided.

“Alexis was playing really well, and she and I could have won,” she said.

In the No. 5 spot, Mukundan dropped the first set against Stanford’s Deason by a score of 6-2, and she trailed 5-3 in the second set when Stanford clinched the victory.

Bergman, the Crimson’s top singles player, opted out of playing her singles match due to a sore shoulder, which had bothered her for most of the season. This, combined with Durkin’s heel sprain, made it hard to compete with a tough Stanford squad.

“[Durkin] has been one of our toughest players all spring,” said Crimson coach Gordon Graham, “but our season’s been very much like this. We’ve been missing one or two people all year. You can’t expect to beat Stanford when you’re missing anybody.”

Anderson did not compete in singles against Stanford, but she, Bergman, and Durkin will remain in Athens, Ga., for the NCAA Individual Championships, held on May 23-28. The No. 33 pair of Anderson and Durkin received an at-large bid for doubles while Bergman, ranked No. 50 in the nation, automatically qualified for the singles competition as the East Region’s top-ranked player.

O’Riain said she felt the team could have gone farther than it did, but now she is looking forward.

“We did OK, but we could have done better,” she said. “Next year hopefully we can step it up again.”

—Staff writer Barbara R. Barreno can be reached at barreno@fas.harvard.edu.