Doubles trouble for M. Tennis after losses

For the men's tennis team, this weekend brought little but disappointment.

After a loss to Princeton last week in their Ivy season opener, the Quakers lost two more league matches on the road this weekend. Friday they fell to Brown, 6-1, and Saturday they dropped a devastating 4-3 match to Yale.

Coach Nik DeVore stressed the added challenge of playing Ivy teams on the road, especially at Providence, R.I., where Penn faced "a very intense team [and] a very vocal crowd" in a notoriously tough venue.

Brown (17-8, 2-0 Ivy) won all three doubles matches, an area the Quakers (9-9, 0-3) have struggled with so far this season. Junior Adam Schwartz, appearing in the No. 3 spot, was Penn's only player to win a singles match, though several other players came close to victory. No. 1 Hicham Laalej lost in three close sets to Brown's Jonathan Pearlman (7-5, 3-6, 7-5).

Ironically, Penn fared better against No. 72 Yale (12-5, 2-0). The tandem of junior Jeffrey Karsh and freshman Jason Lin was the Quakers' only victorious doubles team, though the No. 1 pair of Laalej and Schwartz fought hard, losing by only one point in a tiebreaker to Yale's Michael Caldwell and Connor Dawson.

The Red and Blue fared better in singles. Laalej defeated Yale's top player, Jeff Dawson, 6-1, 4-6, 10-6). Senior captain Jonathan Boym also won his match, an outcome that was especially encouraging considering Boym's ongoing struggle with a shoulder injury.

But Yale's three singles victories were enough to put Penn away, crushing the Quakers' hopes of storming back in the Ivies.

"We really needed to win that match to stay alive in the Ivy League," DeVore said. "It's disappointing."

Next weekend the team stays home to face Dartmouth and Harvard. Currently Penn is undefeated at home, an advantage that should help the team with its confidence.

As the Quakers prepare for the Big Green and Crimson, their big focus is on improving the doubles teams, which DeVore said are "not getting to that point where we can win those doubles points."

Whether or not his team rectifies this issue, DeVore thinks that the next two matches are going to be opportunities to "redeem ourselves a little bit."