HAVERFORD, Pa. – The Haverford College men's tennis team notched its third straight Centennial Conference victory Thursday evening with a 7-2 win against visiting Washington College. The Fords (5-2, 3-0 CC) maintained their spot atop the conference standings with their latest win as Franklin & Marshall is also off to a 3-0 start in the conference.
The Fords took two of the three doubles victories before putting an exclamation point on the evening by winning each of the top five singles positions in straight sets, handing the Shoremen (6-2, 1-2) just their second loss of the spring.
Harrison Elbert and Caleb Mayer each contributed points in both singles and doubles to pace the victory. Elbert teamed up with Luis Acaba at No. 1 doubles for their second straight win together at the top doubles pairing, an 8-5 victory. In his later singles match, Elbert did not allow a game to his opponent at No. 3. His 6-0, 6-0 blanking moved him to 6-4 in singles on the year, including a perfect 3-0 mark at the third position.
Mayer doubled up with Eli Phelps in the third position for Haverford's second doubles victory. The Fords' No. 3 pairing found itself locked at seven-all after 14 games, but broke and held serve in the final two games for the 9-7 win. Mayer carried that strong finish into singles as he allowed just one game in each set for his fourth individual victory of the season.
The Shoremen's lone point of doubles came in the middle pairing as Ryan Holtschneider and Jeremy Novick took down Haverford's Dais Nakayama and Ishaan Prinz in a tiebreak, 7-4, after evenly splitting the first 16 games. However, both Nakayama and Prinz rebounded with key wins in singles. Playing No. 1 singles for just the second time in his career, Nakayama notched his second win at that position and sixth overall on the year with a 6-4, 6-3 win. Prinz picked up his team-leading seventh singles win during a 6-1, 6-2 straight set victory at No. 4 singles against one of his foes that edged him in doubles.
Haverford also got a win from Zack Mason at No. 2 singles. Mason went up early with a 6-2 first set win. Locked at five-all in the second, Mason took the final two games to claim his third straight singles win and move to 4-3 on the year. Washington College's lone singles win came at No. 6 where the Benjamin Soloway collected seven games in the match, but was edged by a 6-3, 6-4 final.
Men's tennis will look to make it four straight conference victories to start the season this weekend when the team travels to Dickinson on Saturday. That match is scheduled to get underway at noon.