Surprises Reign in Ivy Play

When the Harvard men’s tennis team lost its first two Ivy League matches last weekend against Cornell and Columbia, the chances of winning an Ivy title this season looked bleak. Returning home this weekend, the Crimson played with a nothing-to-lose attitude, and put on a display of its best tennis of the year, defeating powerhouse Penn Friday and Princeton Saturday to improve its Ivy record to 2-2.

“After those two losses, it was devastating,” said sophomore Dan Nguyen, who won both of his matches this weekend, including winning the decisive point against the Tigers (6-12, 1-4 Ivy).

“It was a shock because we lost to two teams that are not usually considered the powerhouses in the Ivy League,” he added. “Our mindset this weekend was just to come out and play, and improve our game. There’s definitely still a chance to win the Ivies if certain [teams] beat other [teams], but in terms of us, winning and losing aren’t issues anymore. The wins will come as long as we do what we’re supposed to do.”

Especially impressive was Harvard’s 5-2 win over the Quakers (15-5, 3-1), who had a 12-match winning steak coming into the weekend, and who had just defeated reigning Ivy champion Brown last Saturday.

HARVARD 4, PRINCETON 3

Trying to build on its momentum from the previous night, Harvard started out on an ominous note, losing the doubles point after losing two of three to Princeton. The pair of junior Ashwin Kumar and freshman Sasha Ermakov lost at the first position, 6-8, while the pair of captain Brandon Chiu and freshman Nick Savage won at the third position, 8-6. The deciding match at No. 2 had the Crimson up 30-love en route to forcing an 8-8 tie, but juniors Scott Denenberg and Gideon Valkin wound up losing that game and the match, 7-9.

The players fought back, however, in the singles. Kumar played at the first position and was the first to finish, beating his opponent 6-4, 6-4 with a dominating serve.

“I served well, and didn’t get broken,” Kumar said. “I just played percentage tennis and luckily things just went my way. Today’s really encouraging because we’ve lost so many tough matches this year. We’ve been on the losing side [of 4-3 matches] six or seven times.”

Freshman Chris Clayton, playing at the second position, had the most lopsided match of the day, winning 6-1, 6-3. All of the other four matches went to a third set, with Harvard winning two of the four. Savage and Denenberg lost their matches at the fifth and sixth positions, but Ermakov defeated Tiger Hans Plukas, 6-2, 3-6, 6-2, to tie the score at 3-3, setting up the deciding match between Nguyen and Andrew Lieu at No. 3.

After splitting the first two sets, Nguyen began to overpower his tired opponent in the third set and cruised to win 7-5, 2-6, 6-1.

“The credit goes to Dan, he played so well,” Kumar said. “The last four games, [he] just [played] flawless tennis.”

“I haven’t been playing well for the past few matches,” Nguyen said. “The first two sets here I was kind of slacking off. I didn’t move much the first two sets, so I had tons of energy for the third set. Also, having guys still in it kept me pumped, and me cheering for them helped me out.”

HARVARD 5, PENN 2

On Friday, Harvard came out of the gate swinging as it swept all three doubles matches against Penn. Chiu and Savage defeated John Stetson and Brandon O’Gara of the Quakers at No. 3, 8-6. Denenberg and Valkin, playing at the second position, won 9-7 to clinch the doubles point. Kumar and Ermakov also won at the first position, 8-4.

In the singles, Denenberg picked up a 6-1, 6-4 win at the sixth position over O’Gara, but Penn secured wins at No. 1 and No. 3—defeating Kumar and Ermakov, respectively—to tie the match at 2-2. Savage, playing at No. 5, beat his opponent 6-3, 2-6, 6-2, and Nguyen secured the victory for the Crimson by winning 6-4, 7-5 at the fourth position. Clayton also won his match at No. 2 with a score of 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 to end the day.

“Penn is the favorite in the Ivies and they were cruising,” Nguyen said. “We just played our game, and we didn’t have anything to lose, so it showed. The doubles point, we took it right away. Everyone came with a lot of energy.”

—Staff writer Tony D. Qian can be reached at tonyqian@fas.harvard.edu.