Huang's Win at No. 2 Clinches Victory

WILMINGTON, N.C. – The Yale men's tennis team has been proving that it can win the close ones recently, and Friday's neutral-site match with Old Dominion in North Carolina provided another example. The Monarchs had won 13 of their last 15 matches, including five by 7-0 scores. But the Bulldogs started the day by winning the doubles point, and a split in singles play -- where four of the six matches went to a third set -- gave Yale the 4-3 win.

Yale (7-6, 0-0 Ivy League) has won four of its last five matches, and three of those wins have come by 4-3 scores. Each time the Bulldogs claimed the doubles point, and on Friday they did so with wins at No. 1 from junior Erik Blumenkranz and sophomore Marc Powers and at No. 3 from senior captain Calvin Bennett and sophomore Daniel Hoffman. Blumenkranz and Powers are now 2-0 at No. 1 doubles, and Blumenkranz is 8-1 in his last nine doubles matches. Friday was the first time Bennett and Hoffman played together.

Old Dominion (14-4, 1-1 CAA) got a win at No. 4 singles to even the match at 1-1, but after that Yale reeled off three straight. Hoffman improved to 10-2 in singles play with a straight-set win at No. 3 over Krzysztof Muzalewski, who had been 14-3.

The string of four three-set matches determined the final result. Senior Jordan Abergel earned a win at No. 6 to put Yale up 3-1, and sophomore John Huang clinched the match with a win at No. 2. Losses at No. 1 and No. 5 made the final score 4-3. Powers is one of only two players to have pushed ODU's No. 1, Tobias Fanselow, to a third set during the midst of Fanselow's 15-match winning streak.

Yale returns to New Haven for a rematch with St. John's on Sunday at Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center. The Red Storm topped the Bulldogs 5-2 in February at the ECAC Indoor Team Championship.

Report by Sam Rubin '95 (sam.rubin@yale.edu), Yale Sports Publicity