Men's Tennis Faces Tough Ivy Competition at Northeast Regionals

The Harvard men’s tennis team posted a strong showing against its Ivy League rivals as it continued its fall season at the ITA Northeast Regional in New Haven.

The tournament, which was held Oct. 17-22 at Yale’s Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center, featured representatives from all eight Ivy programs, as well as other northeastern schools, in both singles and doubles draws.

At the ITA Northeast Regional, the Crimson got another look at its Ivy opponents, whom it first faced at the Ivy Plus Invitational in September.

In September, Harvard had several players win their respective singles and doubles flights. This time, the Crimson had some successes, but was also reminded that there is a lot of work to do before the spring season rolls around.

“[The tournament] was very encouraging, and also very sobering,” Harvard coach Dave Fish ’72 said. “The encouraging part is that we know we have guys who can compete with everyone. But our lower level [players are] not consistent enough. All of the guys can hit great shots, but our job as coaches will be to improve our performance and make it more consistent.”

Junior Denis Nguyen, who was seeded second in the tournament, performed strongly in making it all the way to the finals, but lost to Columbia’s Winston Lin, 2-6, 6-3, 6-1. Lin was the first seed in the tournament, and entered the season ranked 54th nationally in singles.

“Denis played a terrific match,” Fish said.  “It was the first time that anybody came close to Lin this week. He was just cruising through all his other matches. So it was definitely some good tennis, and Denis went down fighting.”

Other Crimson players also had success in singles at the tournament, as six Harvard players advanced to the round of 16. Freshman Andrew Ball, who had to qualify for the tournament, then beat players from St. John’s, Penn, and Dartmouth to advance to the round of 16.

There, he faced classmate Sebastian Beltrame, whom he took down, 6-1, 6-0, to advance to the quarterfinals. But Ball lost to Cornell’s Sam Fleck in the quarters.

Overall, the Crimson freshmen had a very strong tournament, including freshman Brian Yeung, who had a 2-1 record, and lost in three sets to the Lions’ Dragos Ignat in the fourth round.

“Having three freshmen make the round of 16 was really impressive,” junior Alex Steinroeder said. “They’ve been doing a great job so far.”

In other singles action, sophomore Nicky Hu made it to the third round before losing to the Big Red’s Chris Vrabel, 6-3, 7-5. Juniors Shaun Chaudhuri and Steinroeder both made it to the round of 16 before falling to opponents from Cornell and Dartmouth, respectively.

In doubles, Harvard also placed two teams into the quarterfinal round. The tandem of Nguyen and senior co-captain Casey MacMaster, ranked 20th in the nation and seeded second in the tournament, rolled into the quarterfinal round, but were upset by the Big Green’s Cameron Ghorbani and Brendan Tannenbaum.

But the pleasant surprise of the tournament came from the new duo of Hu and Yeung, who advanced all the way to the semifinals. The team cruised past a Bulldog duo and a team from Marist College before meeting the No. 1 seed—Columbia’s Max Schnur and Ashok Narayana. Hu and Yeung soundly defeated them, 8-2, before losing to a Big Red team in the quarters.

Steinroeder and sophomore Kelvin Lam, last year’s No. 3 team, beat a St. Bonaventure squad before losing to Cornell’s Quoc-Daniel Nguyen and Jason Luu, 8-4.

The Crimson was satisfied with its performance, but will still tinker with its doubles pairings before the spring season.

“Brian and Nicky Hu played well, and Casey and Denis are established,” Fish said. “We’ll continue to be open to how to put together the next teams after that…. We don’t want to finalize it yet, but will keep doing work and see what gives us the potential to be as strong in doubles as we were last year.”

The tournament also exposed how strong the Ivy League is this season and the challenge Harvard will face in trying to capture its third-straight crown.

“Our guys are all so close and playing great tennis, but there are no illusions about how strong our league is,” Fish said. “It’s a dose of reality to see how good some other teams are getting. That’s a really important motivator for our team…Our guys will have to continue to want to meet a challenge every day.”

—Staff writer Justin C. Wong can be reached at justin.wong@thecrimson.com