Crimson Tennis Squads Register Mixed Results

Every once in a while, history repeats itself. More often, though, it doesn't, and fortunately for the Crimson netmen, the latter was the case this past weekend. The Harvard tennis team won five of the six events to run away with the New England championships in New Haven.

About a year ago, a Harvard squad nuked Yale, 8-1, and then went west to Williamstown, Mass., only to lose the New Englands narrowly to the same Bulldog squad. One week ago, the 1980 version of the Crimson racquet-swingers squeaked by the Elis, 5-4, in that grimy little Connecticut city.

There must have been more than a little apprehension as the Harvard van cruised down the Mass Pike and swung south onto I-84.

But the netmen proved any nervousness unfounded by blasting their way in and out of Yale and setting the stage for Wednesday's all-the-marbles battle with the Tigers from Princeton.

Saturday morning's quarterfinals began nothing short of ominously. As Howard Sands, playing the second slot in the "A" bracket, narrowly avenged last week's loss to Brown's John Hare, Crimson number one Don Pompan and number three Warren Grossman found themselves served into submission on two adjacent courts.

With two of the Crimson's top three players on the sidelines early, it looked, as coach Dave Fish delicately phrased the situation, like the squad would be "taking the early morning turnpike home," adding, "We felt ourselves going down the tubes."

But the Crimson number two players in each of the three brackets managed to pick up the pieces and gain places in the Sunday morning finals of each of the singles divisions.

Sands lost the first set of his "A" bracket quarterfinal match to the Providence College number one player, 7-6, then rebounded to pick up the win in the second set, and iced the match with a tense 5-3 victory in the third set tiebreaker. In the semis he nipped Hare, and in Sunday's finals beat Bob Green, the fire-serving player from P.C., 6-1, 6-3.

The Most

Mike Terner won a crucial quarterfinal match against Dartmouth's Paul Jeffrey, to whom captain Bob Horne had succumbed earlier in the season, and then waltzed through the final round.