Netwomen Roll On

Kathy Vigna, at first glance, does not look like a high-caliber tennis player. She is tall and lanky, but above all very thin, as if she could be bent in half with litle effort.

Even on a tennis court, she looks slightly out of place. Her serve is delivered with a herky-jerky motion that seems to flirt constantly with disaster. Moreover, when she awaits her opponent's serve, she bounces up and down nonchalantly.

But give Vigna a racket and put her behind in a match and she is absolutely magical on the court. In yesterday's dual meet with Syracuse (won by Harvard, 9-0), Vigna twice fell behind to her number-one opponent Kathy Bradford. First, she dropped the opening set to Bradford, 7-5. But Vigna expected this. "I knew when I walked out on the court that it would be a three-setter," she said.

So Vigna the second set with a 3-0 run on games to take the second set, 6-2. But in the final set, with the score tied in games, 4-4, Bradford earned a service break on what turned out to be her most effective weapon of the day, a touch drop-shot from the baseline.

But Bradford would not win another game.

Vigna pressed in the next game, coming in behind her return. The change in strategy helped as Vigna broke serve with ease. After holding her serve at love, Vigna broke Bradford's serve again to win the match.

Vigna's thrilling victory was the feature match of the Harvard-Syracuse dual tennis match, swept by the Crimson in front of 40 spectators at Palmer Dixon Courts.

Sweep

Harvard (now 9-6) took a quick lead over the Orange by sweeping all three doubles matches. "We knew that if we won the doubles matches that they [Syracuse] would be down," said Harvard Captain Robin Boss.

Boss's observation proved true, as Syracuse (now 8-6) played completely unlike the second-ranked team in the East that it was a year ago. The Crimson singles players seeded below first-seeded Vigna lost a total of 17 games in 10 sets.

The Syracuse match was seen by many as an important test for Harvard on its way to the NCAA playoffs, but nobody expected such an easy victory. "They've always given us a really hard time," said Vigna.

Harvard Coach Ed Krass concurs, but he knows that such victories are to be expected from a team he calls "hungry." Krass adds that "we're peaking at the right time" for the last four Ivy League matches of the year.

Yesterday's victory, the team's fifth in a row since spring break, is one of those victories that sends a message to everyone else in the East.