Crimson Racketmen Defeat Engineers; Face Penn and Columbia on Weekend

A well-balanced offensive display led the Harvard racket-men to an 8-1 pasting of a mediocre Engineer squad Tuesday at MIT.

"It was a better match than the score showed, but there was really no question who was the better team," said Crimson coach Jack Barnaby last night.

In fact, the only close match of the day was at number two, where Todd Lundy dropped a close two out of three tilt.

Lundy won the first set, lost the second, and after trailing 4-0 in the third rallied to take a 5-4 lead only to lose the tie-breaker, 7.5. "He just wasn't patient enough, and he tried to force the attack when he should have waited for better opportunities," said Barnaby.

Gary Reiner, playing at number one, had no trouble with his MIT opponent and registered an easy 6-4, 6-2 victory. Captain John Ingard at number three, John Horne at four. Hugh Hyde at five, and Dan Waldman at six recorded equally easy wins over an outgunned Engineer squad.

MIT was unable to mount any greater threat in the doubles, as the Crimson teams of Ingard-Hyde, Waldman-Reiner, and Sandy Wilson-Karl Kravitz all cruised to victory to round out the scoring.

This weekend may hold the key to the racketmen's season, as they host two of the toughest teams in the league, Penn and Columbia, on Friday and Saturday respectively. The squad will be out to avenge last year's losses to both of these teams. They were decimated after three of the top six in the Crimson lineup carne down with the first and were unable to play.

To win the league, the Crimson will then have to best Princeton, the perennial Ivy League leaders, whom they will face in a couple of weeks.

Concerning this weekend, Barnaby said that "the team is really going to be up for these. I think we have a good shot to take both of them, but they'll be right down to the wire."