Yale Athletics
During the three-day Dartmouth Invitational over the weekend, the Yale men’s tennis team sought fierce competition at the Boss Tennis Center against players from Boston University, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth and Harvard.
This is just the team’s second outing, following the fall opener at the Ivy Plus Tournament that concluded on Sept. 22. The team competed without captain Dylan King ’20, sophomore Michael Sun ’22, and first-years Daniel Gale ’23, Robert Shymansky ’23 and Louis Siegler ’23. While the Bulldogs started off slowly this weekend, the team ultimately had a strong showing and carried the momentum built last weekend into New Hampshire.
“Overall the team had a solid weekend,” assistant coach Alex Steinroeder said. “Some close matches didn’t go our way on Friday, but we did a great job of bouncing back on Saturday. All of the guys competed hard this weekend and played the right way within their respective game styles.”
Last weekend’s Ivy Plus Invitational also saw a solid performance from the Bulldogs. Yale started off the season with a boom and set the court on fire in both singles and doubles. The pairing of King and Sun excelled along with the duo of Cody Lin ’21 and Arnav Dhingra ’22, with the latter pair going undefeated.
The Elis saw mixed results in singles play, however, winning roughly half of their matches. The Ivy Plus Tournament was the season opener, but it served as a great test of the Bulldogs’ early preparation.
“For our team we are focusing on doing as well with controllable factors as we can: preparation, competitive presence and making good tactical decisions on court,” head coach Chris Drake said before the start of the season. “I am more concerned with how we do with these things than the results of [the Ivy Plus Tournament].
Yale saw several close matches on the first day of competition at the Dartmouth Invitational. Lin performed well on multiple fronts, following up a close 6–4, 7–6 singles win with a commanding 6–2 doubles win alongside partner Ryan Cheng ’20. Cheng and Camille Kima ’21 both lost tight three-set singles matches in tiebreakers, falling 6–4, 4–6, 10–8 and 6–2, 4–6, 10–6. Additionally, Alan Sou ’21 and Andrew Heller ’20 lost both their individual singles matches as well as their doubles match. Sou returned to the lineup this weekend after missing some time due to injury.
On Saturday, the Yalies dominated play. Despite losing their matches on Friday, the duo of Heller and Sou went undefeated on the day as a pair. Cheng and Lin split their two matches, as they posted a 6–4 win and a 6–3 loss on the day. In singles play, Yale dropped just one of four matches, with Sou losing a close second-set tiebreak. Notably, Kima came back from a 1–6 first-set deficit to win his match against BU 1–6, 6–4, 10–5.
The tournament concluded for Yale on Sunday with a trio of singles matches. Heller collected the only win on the day, beating his opponent from Brown 6–3, 6–4. Both Lin and Kima fell, the latter losing 6–1, 6–1.
“I think we had good results this past weekend,” King said. “Multiple guys gritted out some tough matches against strong teams in the region. The focus for the next two weeks will be to prepare for regionals at UPenn, one of the biggest tournaments of the fall season.”
The squad returns home from Hanover with their heads held high. The men’s tennis team will resume action at the ITA Regional Championships on Oct. 17 in Philadelphia.
Akshar Agarwal | akshar.agarwal@yale.edu