REDLANDS, Calif. – Kevin Yan won his match at No. 2 singles as the Haverford College men's tennis team opened up its west coast trip at Redlands on Tuesday afternoon. Despite's Yan's result and a number of other close matches, the host Bulldogs (3-2) came away with an 8-1 victory to hand the Fords (1-1) their first defeat of the spring season.
Yan opened up his singles match in convincing fashion, winning the first set by a 6-1 score. However, his opponent countered with a 6-0 second set victory to force a decisive third set. Once again, Yan charged ahead early and never looked back as a 6-2 third set win improved his record to 5-2 overall this year, including a perfect 2-0 mark this spring.
First-year George Jiang rallied from a down a break early in the first set to go ahead early at No. 3 singles. Jiang eventually forced a first set tiebreak with his opponent after evenly splitting the first 12 games. In that opening tiebreak, Jiang won by a hard-fought 8-6 margin. Redland's Brad Cummins forced a 10-point tiebreak at No. 3 singles with a strong second set and went on to win the match with a 10-5 advantage in that ultimate tiebreak. Playing at No. 1 singles, Josh Moskovitz forced a second set tiebreak but fell by a narrow 7-5 margin for just his second defeat in nine matches this year.
Redlands controlled the bottom half of the singles lineup with Pranav Krishnan tallying three game victories, while Nick Sweeney and Arnav Patodia each collected a pair of game victories. Starting out the match in doubles, Haverford mounted its toughest challenge in the middle doubles match before Jiang and Krishnan were turned away by an 8-5 score.
Men's tennis will look to bounce back on Wednesday as the team heads two hours further west to take on Chapman University which is located just south of Anaheim. That match tomorrow is scheduled to get underway at 4 p.m. EST (1 p.m. local time in California).