The Yale men’s tennis team opened its season this past weekend at the Farnsworth Ivy Plus Invitational in Princeton, N.J. The Bulldogs were represented in both the singles and doubles brackets, but failed to capture many victories throughout the weekend-long tournament.

The tournament brought 21 schools and 128 players from across the country to New Jersey. Yale had the opportunity to play against many teams it will see later on this season including Princeton, St. John’s and the University of Iowa.

“The Ivy Plus Invitational is the first tournament of the season, and I think everyone on the team enjoyed getting back into competitive play,” captain Zachary Krumholz ’15 said. “We have four tournaments over the next five weeks, so we are excited to continue improving and competing throughout the fall.”

The singles draw featured two impressive performances from Tyler Lu ’17 and Alex Hagermoser ’17. Lu, who had a breakout tournament last year when he won the Singles B draw at the Ivy Plus tournament, played well again this year. He advanced to the quarterfinals after a long three-set victory over Bernardo Casares of Cornell, winning 6–2, 5–7, 7–5. He faced a competitor from Columbia in the quarterfinals, but could not pull out the win, losing 4–6, 2–6.

Hagermoser also had a three-set win over Ben Tso of Princeton, sending him into the quarterfinals of the Jersey Draw. In a tight match, he posted a come-from-behind win over Max Fliegner of Dartmouth, 6–3, 1–6, 7–6, but then fell to Brandon Yeoh of Brown in the semifinal match.

“As a team, we did an excellent job of fighting and grinding out every match, winning a number of three-set matches,” Hagermoser said. “I think this tournament was a great start, but we certainly aren’t satisfied and are looking to go deeper in our upcoming tournaments.”

The Elis posted more losses than wins in the single draw. Daniel Faierman ’15, Krumholz, Photos Photiades ’17, Martin Svenning ’16 and Ziqi Wang ’18 all lost their matches in the round of 16. Wang performed better in the consolation bracket. After winning a third-set tiebreaker over a Princetonian in the first round and overcoming Przemyslaw Filipek of Monmouth in the semifinals, Wang advanced to the finals of the consolation draw. In the finals, he took another Princeton competitor to a third-set tiebreaker, but lost 3–6, 6–3, 8–10.

“The competition was strong, and I got my first taste [of] competing against players from other Ivy schools,” Wang said. “In singles competition, I finished 2–2, but overall I was happy with the results.”

The doubles bracket followed a similar pattern — three out of four doubles pairings advanced to the round of 16, where the duos lost. After a comfortable 8–2 win over a pair from Iowa, Lu and Faierman beat another duo from Cornell to advance to the quarterfinals. The pair later lost to a duo from St. John’s 5–8.

By the conclusion of the tournament on Sunday, the Elis were only participating in non-bracketed play. Lu and Hagermoser both posted victories over competitors from Cornell in non-bracketed singles.

The team will next travel to Philadelphia to compete in the Penn Classic, beginning on Sept. 26.