Men's Tennis Falls Just Shy of Four-Win Trip

The Harvard men’s tennis team came close to sweeping a four-match tour of California over spring break but paid a high cost for a few tough breaks, ending up with a 2-2 record for the trip.

The week started out auspiciously for the Crimson, as the squad pounded the University of the Pacific, 6-1, on Monday and then captured an unprecedented 5-2 victory over Stanford on Wednesday.

Harvard’s roll slowed on Thursday evening at Fresno State, where the Crimson lost 4-3, before the squad lost the final match of its road trip on Saturday, another 4-3 heartbreaker at Santa Clara.

The road trip gave Harvard an opportunity to tune up for the Ivy League season that begins Friday at the Beren Tennis Center against Cornell.

“I was very happy with the spring break trip,” head coach Dave Fish ’72 said. “To go to everybody’s home facility and to be that close to coming away 4-0 is really impressive.”

Crucially for the Crimson, the road trip saw the return of Sasha Ermakov, whose potential to have a breakthrough year was apparent in his stellar play in both singles and doubles in his first two matches of the weekend. But the sophomore’s inexperience under high-stress situations hurt Harvard at inopportune moments.

“Sasha’s match was the down-payment we make on the Ivy season,” Fish said, referring to Ermakov’s first tough singles loss in the Fresno State contest. “Your nervous system has to have some time to assimilate the very high stress level of a match.”

In another positive development, the doubles duo of co-captains Scott Denenberg and Gideon Valkin regained the swagger it had lost earlier this season, winning all four of its matches on the road trip and holding steady in close situations.

Going forward, the pair should add vigor to a doubles lineup that faltered earlier this year and help the team secure the early doubles point that often makes the difference between winning and losing.

SANTA CLARA 4, HARVARD 3

Though it was not Harvard’s first glimpse of bad weather on what the team had hoped to be a sun-only trip, the conditions on Saturday for the Crimson’s match against the Broncos proved to be just bad enough to derail its hopes for a winning road trip, as Harvard fell to Santa Clara, 4-3, on a blustery afternoon.

This match was one in which the doubles point proved decisive, with Harvard’s loss accounting for the margin of victory. Harvard’s No. 1 and No. 3 teams lost, with Ermakov and junior Ashwin Kumar falling, 8-5, at the top spot and freshman Michael Hayes and junior Dan Nguyen losing, 8-6. Denenberg and Valkin’s 8-7 win could not help the Crimson win the best-of-three doubles point.

“We came out flat in doubles,” Fish said.

Harvard split the singles points with the Broncos, with the Crimson’s No. 1, 4, and 5 players winning their matches.

At No. 1, junior Chris Clayton split his first two sets, winning the first, 6-2, and losing the second, 6-7(6). In the third set, Clayton took a 3-1 lead before winning the match by retirement.

“Chris ran his opponent so hard that he got cramps,” Fish said.

Clayton’s opponent may have thrown in the towel because Santa Clara’s victory was already sealed at that point.

Ermakov, playing at No. 6, took his opponent to three sets before losing, clinching the match for the Broncos.

“It’s good that I got this—hopefully—out of my system,” said Ermakov, who lost the match 1-6, 7-6(5), 6-4. “The main thing is having an idea of what to do on the big points.”

Nguyen lost a grinding two-set match at No. 3, 7-6, 7-6, while Kumar lost, 6-3, 6-4, at No. 2.

FRESNO STATE 4, HARVARD 3

Harvard’s California tour took a turn for the worse under the lights and vocal crowd of No. 68 Fresno State’s Wathen Tennis Center, as the Crimson lost, 4-3.

“It was tough to lose,” Fish said, “but I felt that to come out of there with a win last night would have been almost heroic.”

Like the Santa Clara match, the clinching contest was Ermakov’s, and he nearly pulled out a victory, losing 3-6, 6-4, 6-3.

Unlike the Santa Clara match, however, the Crimson’s doubles lineup rolled past the Bulldogs, sweeping at all three positions.

Harvard’s singles wins came at No. 3 and 5 from Kumar and Valkin, respectively.

HARVARD 5, STANFORD 2

The Crimson had never won a men’s match against Stanford, so its resounding victory against the No. 55 Cardinal on Wednesday was cause for much celebration.

Harvard came out firing on all cylinders and never looked back. The Crimson relished its first opportunity this year to play in the sun, quickly snapping up the doubles point with two of three wins—anchored by the solid net play of Ermakov and Kumar at No. 1—and then winning all its singles matches except for at No. 1 and 4, where Clayton and Deneberg were outgunned by their opponents.

With the victory secure, the Crimson took a much needed break from being serious, with Clayton declaring, “within minutes, the shirts are off, the sunblock’s on, and we’re burning up the courts. We shake and bake.”

HARVARD 6, PACIFIC 1

The Crimson’s first scheduled outdoor match was moved inside due to heavy rain on Monday, but Harvard took the change in stride, pummeling the Tigers 6-1.

The match was notable mostly for the return of Ermakov to the lineup.

“Other than Ashwin’s loss, it was really straightforward, wonderful tennis,” Fish said.

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