HAVERFORD, Pa. – The Haverford College men's tennis team notched its first win of the spring season with a 7-2 victory inside the Alumni Field House on Saturday afternoon. The Fords (1-1) swept through the doubles portion of the match and won four of the singles matches to defeat the visiting Sea Gulls (7-2).
The Fords got their most convincing doubles win at the No. 1 match with Josh Moskovitz and David Kong securing an 8-3 win for their first victory together this spring. Haverford went up 2-0 shortly after that with Rob Kresch and Ishaan Prinz tallying an 8-5 victory in the No. 3 doubles match.
The tightest match up in doubles came at the middle pairing with Dais Nakayama and Kevin Yan. Nevertheless, the Fords' No. 2 doubles team improved to 2-0 together on the young spring season by winning seven of the nine points during the tiebreak after evenly splitting the first 16 games.
After a thrilling finish to doubles, the singles match ups featured more drama with two 10-point tiebreaks and set tiebreaks in three different matches, including a 9-7 tiebreak at No. 1. Haverford split the 10-point tiebreak matches with Nakayama (No. 4) dropping only a second set tiebreak, but recovering to hold off his opponent by a 10-8 score in the ultimate tiebreak. David Kong blanked his opponent in the opening set and finished off his victory with a 7-4 tiebreak win for a straight set victory at No. 6. Kong is now 6-0 in singles dating back to the fall season.
At No. 1 singles, Moskovitz played a tightly-contested opening set which needed extra points to decide the tiebreak. He would win the opening set tiebreak by a 9-7 score. Fully seizing the momentum from that set, he rolled to a 6-2 victory in the second. Pranav Krishnan won his first collegiate singles match on Saturday. He pulled out a 7-5 victory during his opening set before rolling to a 6-4 win in the second. Salisbury's only wins came at Nos. 2 and 3. In the No. 3 singles match, it was an 11-9 tiebreak that denied the Fords another victory on the afternoon.
Men's tennis will now depart for Orlando, Florida during the College's upcoming week of Spring Break. While in the Sunshine State, the Fords are scheduled to play three matches. The first of those contests will be on Tuesday, March 13 when the team battles Schreiner in a 9 a.m. start.