Yale Dominates in Doubles; Doehler and Lu Drop Close Matches in 6-1 Loss to No. 27 Princeton
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale men's tennis team came into Sunday's match against Princeton on the heels of its most impressive result of the season, a 5-2 victory over No. 67 Penn. Although the Bulldogs were carrying some positive momentum into Sunday's home match, Princeton (17-4) proved simply too strong on the day and truly played like one of the best teams in the nation. Despite a generally disappointing 6-1 score line, the Elis can take pride in the fact that they excelled in doubles and put in a gutsy singles performance against such a tough opponent.
Yale started Sunday's match with perhaps its best doubles performance of the season. At No. 1 doubles, Fedor Andrienko and Stefan Doehler continued the dominance that saw them win 6-1 against Penn by topping Princeton's Thomas Colautti and Zack McCourt, ranked No. 34 in the nation. With this 6-3 victory, Andrienko and Doehler have solidified themselves as a doubles force to be reckoned with in the Ivy League. At No. 3 doubles, Yale sophomore duo Alex Hagermoser and Tyler Lu also worked well together en route to a 6-3 victory. Yale's No. 2 team of Martin Svenning and Ziqi Wang finalized the doubles sweep for the Bulldogs with an impressive 6-4 win over Princeton's Luke Gamble and Diego Vives, who came into Sunday's match with a 7-3 record.
After such a disappointing start, Princeton fired out of the gate in singles and appeared to catch Yale slightly off guard. The Tigers picked up three quick points with straight-set victories at the No. 2, No. 4, and No. 6 singles positions; and after Princeton's Diego Vives improved his win streak to 11 matches with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Yale senior Daniel Faierman, the match had already been decided in Princeton's favor. The Bulldogs' No. 1 player Tyler Lu, however, refused to go down easily and pushed Princeton star Zack McCourt (15-4) to two tiebreakers; Doehler also competed well at No. 3 singles and narrowly lost in an abbreviated third set tiebreak to Alexander Day.
Despite Sunday's loss to Princeton, the unranked Elis can't be too disappointed with the weekend's results, which featured the team's first win over a nationally ranked team this season. Now with an 11 – 7 overall record (1 – 1 Ivy), Yale has made a solid start to the 2015 Ivy League season and will next travel to New York to play No. 28 Columbia on Apr. 11.
Report by Cameron Ferguson '18, Yale Sports Publicity
