Men's Tennis Repeat As Ivy Champions

The Harvard men’s tennis team’s weekend schedule may have been interrupted, but its momentum certainly wasn’t, as the team continued its roll by defeating rival Yale, 5-2, on Sunday in New Haven at the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center.

The No. 22 Crimson (17-4, 5-0 Ivy) has now won 12 straight matches and 10 straight Ancient Eight matchups dating to last season following the defeat of the No. 57 Bulldogs (17-6, 3-3 Ivy). And a weekend that began with a schedule shakeup ended with happy news: After Princeton lost to Columbia Sunday night, Harvard was assured at least a share of the Ivy League title for the second consecutive year.

On Sunday, Harvard maintained its dominance over the rest of the Ivy League as it continued its march towards a second consecutive outright conference title. The Crimson also took down the Bulldogs for the second time this season after scoring a 4-2 victory in February at the ECAC Division I Indoor Team Championships in Ithaca.

This time, Harvard took it to Yale on its home courts.

The Crimson started off hot in doubles play, where its top tandem of sophomore Denis Nguyen and junior co-captain Casey MacMaster, ranked 52nd in the nation, took an early break en route to winning the match, 8-5. After the second team of freshman Nicky Hu and senior co-captain Andy Nguyen also prevailed, the No. 3 match was suspended and Harvard clinched the doubles point for the 12th straight match.

In singles, the bottom three singles spots took care of business in short order to quickly eliminate any suspense and give the Crimson the match.

First, freshman Kelvin Lam took down the Bulldogs’ Kyle Dawson on the sixth court, 6-2, 6-1. Then, sophomore Alex Steinroeder, playing in the fourth spot on Sunday, handed Yale’s Martin Svenning his first home singles loss of the year, 6-2, 6-4.

Freshman Nicky Hu then won in straight sets over Zach Dean at No. 5 to push Harvard ahead 4-0 and clinch the match.

With the victory secured, the Crimson did not fare quite as well in the top slots in matches that concluded after the match was out of reach. Crimson head coach Dave Fish referred to the Bulldogs’ top three singles players as “outstanding.” Yale’s No. 1 and No. 2 players, seniors John Huang and Marc Powers, respectively, had both compiled 4-1 records in Ivy play before facing Harvard.

But on the second court, sophomore Shaun Chaudhuri won the first set 7-5 before Powers retired in the second set, marking Powers’ first home singles loss of the season and giving the Crimson a 5-0 advantage.

Andy Nguyen is 12-2 in fourth singles this season, but was playing at No. 3 on Sunday and lost in three sets.

Finally, at No. 1, Huang and Denis Nguyen played a tight match. Nguyen took the first set 6-4 and broke Huang’s serve twice early in the second, but Huang fought back and won the set and the deciding “super tiebreak” that was played in place of a third set. The loss provided the final 5-2 margin.

All things considered, Fish was very happy with the way his team took on the top of the Bulldogs’ lineup.

“I thought they did a great job,” he said. “Denis played terrific tennis, but just lost focus at the end. Andy also did a tremendous job. And Shaun really came out hitting it from the beginning, and put pressure on Powers that he wasn’t used to.”

The Crimson was originally scheduled to play Brown on Friday at home before making the trip to play Yale on Sunday, but because the citywide manhunt for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev put the campus on lockdown, the match had to be postponed and rescheduled for next Thursday.

“Our first thoughts when we knew the match was canceled were about the families affected,” Chaudhuri said. “We wanted to make sure our minds were in the right place. It definitely called for thought and reflection, and really puts things in perspective as far as how thankful we are for the opportunity to play tennis. At the same time, we had to keep working hard and preparing for Yale.”

Although the team knows it has a share of the Ivy title clinched, it will keep its focus on the matches ahead.

“Brown on Thursday, Dartmouth on Saturday,” Chaudhuri said. “We’re going to keep working and fine-tuning to get to where we want to be for the last Ivy matches. We’ve still got to do this a couple more times.”

—Staff writer Justin C. Wong can be reached at justinwong@college.harvard.edu.