ORLANDO, Fla. - The No. 29 Haverford College men's tennis team (2-2) opened up its weeklong stint in Central Florida with a split on a hot muggy Monday, falling to UAA foe Carnegie Mellon by an 8-1 final in the morning match at Sanlando Park, before returning in the late afternoon across town at the Fort Gatlin Tennis Center, outlasting Covenant in a 5-4 marathon.
Against the No. 23 Tartans of Carnegie Mellon, Haverford started out slow, falling behind in doubles 3-0. The team of James McKenzie and Max Beckwith gave their opponents fits in a loss, as Raahil Doshi and Jaden D'Abreo finally fended off the pair of Fords 8-6 to go into singles play up 3-0.
CMU got to the brink of clinching the match as Akshay Joshi got past Adam Chow at sixth singles (6-1, 6-1), but McKenzie fended off Jonathan Nottingham (6-2, 2-6, 6-4) to put a much needed tally on the Haverford side of the ledger at the fifth flight. The Tartans eventually clinched the match at number four, with Matthew Poh taking down Danny Loder 6-4, 6-3. Elsewhere, Stefan Johnson took Nicholas Wernink to a decisive third game at number two singles, while Andreas Wingert was defeated in a superbreaker after splitting the first two sets with Doshi at the top flight.
Against Covenant, the doubles pairing of Beckwith and Kirin Eicher opened things up with an 8-5 win before the Scots rallied to take the top two doubles flights, sending Haverford to singles play down a match.
Justin Minerva made quick work of Ben Luke (6-1, 6-0) to knot things up at 2-2, and Abhinav Nallapareddy then gave Haverford the early lead with his 6-3, 7-5 sweep of Ethan Gibson. Wingert got it done with a key win at the top flight, outlasting Ben Onufrock in a superbreaker (6-3, 3-6, 10-7), to put Haverford on the brink of the clinch. Austin Dreslinski and Gill Dunn each delivered singles wins for the Scots, with Dreslinski victorious over McKenzie at the second flight and Dunn a winner over Eichner at the fifth (6-4, 6-2) to once again knot things up at 4-4.
It all came down to number six singles with the contest tied. First-year Niki Lavu was able to get past Solomon Crouch, coming up huge for 6-4 and 7-5 wins to clinch the match for the Fords well into the night, as the marathon day for Haverford ended in celebration.
Haverford will now take a brief period of rest and prep on Tuesday, before returning to match action on Wednesday, March 8 with a pair of matchups at the USTA National Campus, taking on Rochester (2:30 p.m.) and Wheaton (6 p.m.) on another busy day of action in Orlando.