Baylor Halts Run By M. Tennis in Second Round of NCAAs

In one of the most competitive matches of the Harvard men’s tennis team’s season, the Crimson fell 4-0 in the second round of the NCAA tournament to Baylor yesterday afternoon. It was the farthest Harvard had advanced in the postseason since 1999.

On Saturday, the Crimson dispatched Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion Marist, 4-0, in the first round of the tournament, held at the Beren Tennis Center.

The Crimson finished the season with a 15-6 record.

“I think the team performed great once we got used to the level [of play] we were seeing,” senior co-captain Dalibor Snyder said. “We hadn’t seen players like that in a couple months. Once we got readjusted, we competed well in every match.”

“But that’s just the result of playing in a weak Ivy conference,” Snyder added.

Not all of the players’ seasons are over, however. Freshman Jonathan Chu will take part in the NCAA singles tournament in late May, and he will team with junior Oli Choo in the doubles competition.

Baylor 4, Harvard 0

Even though the Crimson hosted the tournament subregional, it was a definite underdog against Baylor (27-1) in a match forced indoors to the Murr Center by afternoon rain.

The Bears were riding a 16-match winning streak since March and were ranked No. 6 in the 64-team tourney and No. 4 nationally. Harvard, in contrast, was unseeded in the tournament and carried a No. 33 national ranking.

The Crimson almost immediately showed that it was comfortable swinging away against such a high-ranking team, especially one filled with nationally top-ranked players.

At No. 1 doubles, the Harvard duo of Snyder and Chu, playing in only their third match together, faced Baylor’s Nathan McGregor and Markus Hornung, the No. 34-ranked doubles pair in the country. Snyder and Chu—an aggressive lefty-righty combination—hung early and got the match to 5-5.

The other two doubles matches were heading toward a split. Sophomore Chris Chiou teamed up with co-captain William Lee in the No. 2 spot, but got down quickly against the Bears’ Benjamin Becker and Zoltan Papp, eventually losing 8-3.

In the final doubles match, junior David Lingman and sophomore Mark Riddell cruised early on, going up 7-2 versus Matias Marin and Reiner Neurohr. Baylor managed to roll off five straight games, however, to tie the score at 7-7.

At that point, though, the No. 1 match was coming to an exciting conclusion. The Bears broke Snyder’s serve to go up 6-5, and finished off the Crimson 8-6 to win the doubles point.

“We had the points to win in almost every single match, especially the doubles,” Snyder said.

Harvard’s hands were even more full in singles play. Things started off slowly for the Crimson, and it looked as if the match would be over much quicker than anyone had anticipated.

At No. 1 singles, Chu, ranked 73rd nationally in singles play, dropped the first set 6-3 to Becker, who is ranked at No. 9 in the country. Lingman, with a No. 124 ranking and playing at the No. 2 spot, also lost his first frame, 6-2, to No. 45 Papp.

The Crimson’s only early positive sign was Lee’s 6-2 first-set victory over Neurohr.

After Becker disposed of Chu, 6-3, 6-3, to give Baylor a 2-0 lead, the Crimson began storming back. Sophomore Cliff Nguyen, who had lost his first set to Hornung 6-3, forced the German into unforced error after unforced error.

Nguyen got ahead and took the second set 6-4. At the same time, Riddell, playing at the No. 4 position, was also coming back from a one-set deficit, as was Lingman.

The Harvard crowd went so wild over the possibility of the upset, that, at one point, head referee Don Cortese issued a warning to keep it down.

But the momentum did not last. Riddell finally succumbed to Marin 7-5 in the second set which gave Baylor a 3-0 lead. The Bears needed only one more Harvard player to fall in order to advance to the NCAA regionals in College Station, Texas.

Sophomore Chris Chiou, in the No. 6 spot, was in the unfortunate spot of being that final person for Harvard. Going up against Armando Carrascosa, Chiou had narrowly lost a first-set tiebreaker. He fought Carrascosa valiantly until the Bear freshman pulled out the last two games to win 6-4 in the second set.

The other matches were suspended per NCAA rules, making the final margin of victory 4-0.

“In the singles, things were starting to turn around. But Baylor was better on the key points,” Snyder said.

Harvard 4, Marist 0

For the second time this year, the Crimson easily defeated the Red Foxes. In a match that was decided in under two hours, Harvard did not even drop a set on its way to its first NCAA tournament victory since 1999.

The domination started at doubles. Riddell and Lingman rolled over their Marist opponents, Nick Bass and Victor Sapezhnikov, 8-0 in a half-hour’s time. Harvard clinched the doubles point a few minutes later when Chiou and Lee took the No. 2 match, 8-2, over Michael Sowter and David Slater.

The singles proved as easy as the doubles. Lee finished off Sapezhnikov at the No. 5 spot without breaking a sweat, 6-0, 6-0. Lingman was next up, defeating Sowter in an hour, 6-3, 6-0.

The Crimson clinched the sweep with a 6-4, 6-1 victory by Chiou at No. 6.

“It was a good all-around match. Marist deserves a lot of respect for winning their conference,” Harvard coach David Fish ’72 said.