No. 14 Harvard men’s tennis, who recently came off of an undefeated season in Ivy League play, an Ivy League Championship victory, and a first round win in the NCAA tournament to Monmouth, faced off against No. 18 Stanford in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Saturday, May 7, at the Murr Center in Cambridge, M.A. Knowing it was a win-or-stay-home scenario, the Crimson stepped up to the plate, and while they failed to secure the team victory, they stayed in it until the very last point.
Harvard entered into an immediate slugfest with the Cardinal in doubles play. Junior Steven Sun and No. 38 sophomore Henry von der Schulenburg first dropped on court three to a Stanford duo, while the No. 42 ranked duo of (individually ranked) No. 66 senior captain Brian Shi and first-year Daniel Milavsky took on the No. 41 ranked duo from Stanford in a back-and-forth fight. Shi noted that although this was one of their toughest doubles matches of the season, they stepped up to the plate and were able to deliver on everything they had been working toward.
“Yeah honestly, I think that was one of the best matches we played all year,” the senior captain said. “They made some unbelievable shots but we knew as long as we kept our foot on the pedal and maintained that fire that we were eventually going to get a break, and eventually we did. That’s how college tennis works, in doubles it can be just one or two points that make the difference.”
Shi and Milavsky closed out their match by a score of 7-5, leaving it to No. 60 junior Harry Walker and sophomore Ronan Jachuck to secure the doubles point. Walker and Jachuck faced off against even stiffer competition, the No. 25 ranked pair Arthur Fery and Alexandre Rotsaert, and found themselves similarly playing down to the wire. The ball failed to land consistently on the right side of the paint for the Crimson, though; Stanford closed it out with a 7-5 victory, snatching the doubles point from Harvard and putting them up 1-0 in the match.
Being down a point after doubles was not a position that the Crimson had found itself in very much recently, as it secured the doubles point in seven of its previous eight team matches. Even so, it felt like the team was still in a good position to stay in the match and rebound.
“Since this was such a big match, there was really no time to be down or discouraged,” Shi said. “I think we were all feeding off the energy from the crowd, so none of us were really that down; we were ready to move to singles.”
After two sets, however, Harvard found itself in an even bigger hole, as Jachuck dropped his match on Court 4 to No. 78 Alexandre Rotsaert, 2-6, 0-6, putting Stanford’s lead to 2-0. Still, …….
Source: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/5/11/harvard-menstennis-ncaas-stanford-2022/