Racquetmen Top Williams, 8-1, Gear Up for Princeton Match

Sure it's a familiar story. But it's pleasant one nonetheless. The Harvard men's squash team added another to its line of victories yesterday, subduing Williams' Purple Cows, 8-1, in the final tune-up before Saturday's showdown against Princeton.

Williams represented Harvard's first go at a quality opponent, albeit one that the Crimson could afford to take on at less than full strength.

Early in the season the Purple Cows won 5-4 decisions over Yale and Penn. They dropped another by the same score to Dartmouth. Harvard nonetheless scaled everyone up a position to face the upstarts (Yale and Penn being squash establishment), giving number-one David Boyum a rest after competition in last weekend's Cowles Championships.

The Cows administered Harvard's first individual defeat of the season. Greg Zaff, a good-retrieving, precision-hitting sophomore took co-captain Chip Robie to five games and then beat him down he stretch, 15-11.

Yesterday's match marked the emergence of the thoroughly dominating squash that strapping Geordie Lommon's physique has always promised but his match savvy had thus far denied. Lemmon ripped off the first 14 points of the contest from his hapless opponent, enroute to a 15-3, 15-7, 15-8 demolition.

In Perspective

But at root what the Crimson had yesterday was a solid 8-1 win that raised the team's record to 3-0, not to mention a pretty good lead in to Princeton. John Dinneen, Tal Johnson, and Dinneen's younger sibling Peter all matched Lemmon's 3-0 example. Mitch Reese, Charlie Duffy, and Jim Lubowitz won in four games while Spencer Brog put on the most courageous show of the day at number five, recovering to win his match in the fifth game after squandering a big lead in the fourth.

THE NOTEBOOK: The four-hour bus ride to Williamstown may have accounted for the lethargy displayed by the racquetmen in the early going...Robie, a four-year senior, had never played number-one prior to yesterday's match...The Tigers will arrive in town tomorrow in early preparation for Saturday's big match...Boyum played impressively at the Cowles Championships, losing, 3-2, in the quarter-finals to Joe Swain, a former penn player. In the preceding match he defeated Frank Brosens, who played number-one for Princeton three years ago.