The Ivy season is still young, but if early results are any indication, things are going to be different for Penn men’s tennis this time around.
One week after upsetting Princeton in their conference play opener, the Quakers (6-10, 2-1 Ivy) split their weekend homestand with Brown and Yale, handling the Bears on Saturday, 4-2, before falling to the Elis on Sunday by the same margin.
Against Brown (10-8, 0-2), the Red and Blue faced an early deficit after surrendering the doubles point.
It didn’t last particularly long, as the Quakers responded by sweeping the top four matches in singles play as Vim De Alwis, Jeremy Court, Matt Nardella and Zach Katz all triumphed.
De Alwis’ match at first singles was the only contest that wasn’t decided in straight sets, as the sophomore dropped his first set to the Bears’ Justin To before picking up 6-1 and 6-4 victories in the second and third, respectively.
On Sunday, though, the Quakers were on the wrong end of some late drama.
The Elis (12-5, 1-1) and the Red and Blue were tied, 2-2, heading into the finals singles matches, as Penn pinned its hopes on Court and Nardella.
Though Court won his first set against Yale’s Daniel Faierman, he fell 6-0 in the second and 6-4 in the tiebreaker set, handing the Bulldogs the win despite the fact that Nardella held a 5-0 lead against his opponent in the third set of his own match.
Despite the tough loss, the Quakers still sit in a far better position at this point in the season than last year — in 2013, Penn started out 0-3 in Ivy play after falling to the same three teams.
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