Men's Tennis Closes Fall in Three Locations

The Harvard men’s tennis team split into three this weekend, but didn’t skip a beat from its previous strong performances, advancing three players into the final rounds of one tournament and two into the quarterfinals of another.

The Crimson sent three players to the Seminole Invitational in Tallahassee, Fla., seven players to Dartmouth’s Big Green Invitational in Hanover, N.H., and it sent co-captain Dan Nguyen to ITA National Indoor Championships in Columbus, Ohio.

The weekend’s matches were the team’s last before its long winter layoff, which continues until late January. As such, they were an opportunity for the players to build positive momentum and to uncover any weaknesses that can be addressed during the winter.

For Nguyen, who earned a berth in the national indoor tournament with his second-place finish as the ITA Regionals in Princeton, N.J., two weeks before, the weekend’s task was to prove he could hold his own against players from the highest echelons of college tennis. Though he lost both of his matches, he succeeded in doing just that.

“When you see these guys off the court, you see they have a lot of skill,” Nguyen said of his competition. “They hit a big, heavy ball. But this tournament let me gain confidence in my own game, let me know that my game is big enough and that I understand it well enough to compete at a national level.”

In Nguyen’s first match, against preseason No. 11 Oleksandr Nedovyesov of Oklahoma, nerves tripped him up. By the time he had adjusted to the slick courts, he had lost the first set, 6-2.

“It’s not like he blew me off the court—the points were good,” Nguyen said. “But I made a lot of errors.”

Down a break in the second set, Nguyen ratcheted up his level of play. But his surge was not enough to overcome Nedovyesov, who held out to win the second set, 6-3.

In the consolation draw, Nguyen faced Ohio State’s preseason No. 6 Bryan Koniecko, who had been upset in the opening round. Overwhelmed by Koniecko’s spinless lasers, Nguyen was bageled, 6-0, in the first set. He bounced back to win the second set, 7-5, but could not hang onto his momentum, and lost the third set, 6-2.

Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, junior co-captain Chris Clayton, senior Ashwin Kumar, and junior Sasha Ermakov powered the Crimson to a strong showing in the Seminole Invitational. Despite arriving at their hotel very early Friday morning, all three Harvard players ground their way to wins through long opening matches. Kumar and Clayton made it into the quarterfinals of the 32-player tournament.

“All the matches were grinds,” Clayton said. “It was impossible to win anything from the baseline.”

Clayton added that the strong performance against a tournament field packed full of players from powerful SEC schools showed “that we can compete at a national level.”

Kumar, despite suffering from a fever, won a three-setter, 7-6(10), 3-6, 6-1, that included a marathon first-set tiebreaker in which he saved a number of set points. He won his next round, 6-3, 0-1, after his opponent retired due to injury, but was eliminated in the quarters, 6-2, 6-4.

Ermakov won his first-round match in two draining sets, 7-6 (4), 7-6(5), before falling to hometown favorite and sixth seed Sam Chang in three sets, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

Clayton, seeded fourth, won his opening match in what he called a “dogfight,” 6-2, 6-7(4), 6-3. True to form, his second match was another three-hour-plus marathon that he eventually won, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2.

“It was not a pretty match,” Clayton said. “But it was a match I needed to win, definitely a situation where we won playing ugly tennis.”

Clayton lost his quarterfinal match, 6-7, 6-3, 6-1, against highly touted Alex Lacroix of Florida.

In addition, seven Crimson players traveled to Dartmouth’s Big Green Invitational, where they stole the show from the home team. According to coach Dave Fish ’72, Harvard won all its match tiebreakers, a rare feat indicating that these players, who usually play toward the bottom of the Crimson rotation, thrive under pressure.

Freshmen Alexei Chijoff-Evans and Aba Omodele-Lucien cruised to the championship in the A doubles bracket.

The B singles championship to be held today will feature two Harvard freshmen, Will Guzick and Tim Wu. Sophomore Michael Hayes will compete in the A singles championship today.

—Staff writer Jonathan B. Steinman can be reached at steinman@fas.harvard.edu.