Men's Tennis Blasts Past Cornell

For the Harvard men's tennis team, Saturday's 7-0 victory over Cornell was exactly what it expected--a blowout. Harvard  7 Cornell  0

Although the Crimson's win over Dartmouth on April 25 assured it the Eastern Intercollegiate Tennis Association (EITA) championship, the thrashing of the Big Red gave it the added boasting privileges of an undefeated EITA record. The Crimson last posted a perfect league record in 1992.

The Crimson (17-6 overall, 9-0 EITA) had minimal expectations for the Big Red (6-12, 1-8), a squad that has consistently struggled.

Anticipating this lopsided matchup, two of the Crimson's top players--captain Andrew Rueb and sophomore Mitty Arnold--did not make the draining trip to Ithaca, N.Y., choosing to save their energy for this weekend's NCAA Region I tournament at Princeton.

The Crimson grabbed the doubles point to start of the match.

Although the Crimson pulled out each of the three doubles matches, it did face rougher competition than originally expected.

At first doubles, junior Todd Meringoff and sophomore Josh Hausman--who recently began playing second doubles together--defeated a relentless Cornell duo, 9-7.

"We played up and down," Hausman said. "We've been getting off to some slow starts. They served for the set and we broke them, and ended up serving out the match."

The freshman duo of Philip Tseng and Tom Blake won at second doubles, 8-5, and juniors Dan Chung and Adam Valkin took third doubles, 8-6.

In singles, the Crimson steam-rolled the Big Red, and the final outcome was never in doubt.

At first singles, Tseng continued his roll through Eastern competition, defeating Jonathan Rapkin, 6-4, 6-1.

At second singles, Blake overcame a rough first set to take his match against Matt Atlas, 2-6, 6-2, 6-2.

Meringoff won convincingly, 6-3, 6-3, over Brian Kintz at third singles.

Crimson wins were also posted by Chung, Hausman and Valkin, at fourth, fifth and sixth singles, respectively.

Although the win was a formality for the Crimson, it was also its final testing ground before the opening rounds of the prestigious NCAA Championships this weekend.

"We did what we wanted to do," Meringoff said. "We played quality points and didn't have any let-ups."

"I think that we went into the match with the mindset that we were going to keep working on our games and build for regionals," Chung said.

This weekend marks a new beginning for the squad, where it has the opportunity to put its experiences to use, and make its case known throughout the nation.