By Adam Small
The Dartmouth Senior Staff
In their final match of the season, Dartmouth's men's tennis team hosted the Harvard Crimson on Wednesday. Despite huge days from Jeff Sloves '02 and Drew Dinkmeyer '04, the Big Green could not put together their first Ivy League victory of the season, losing 4-3.
The Big Green went out to the sunny Topliff Courts hoping to spoil the final match of Harvard's season and to send off their two seniors, Harlan Thompson and David Martin, with a big win. The young Dartmouth squad started off the doubles play in impressive fashion.
Sloves and Dinkmeyer, playing first doubles, lit up opponents Anthony Barker and George Turner with a trio of service breaks and blasted their way to an 8-2 victory.
At third doubles, Borko Kereshi '04 and Parashar Ranade '02 had trouble with Dali Snyder and Chris Chiou and fell 8-4 to even the doubles at one.
Neal Bobba '04 and Jesse Paer '04 started out slow at second doubles, falling behind 0-3 early on. They turned it around by feeding off the energy of their teammates and broke serve to pull even at 7-7. Both teams held serve to set up a tiebreaker to decide the all-important doubles point.
The momentum went back and forth in the tight tiebreaker, but Harvard eventually prevailed 8-6 to take the match and the first point. Dartmouth now needed to take four singles matches to win.
Sloves continued his ultra-hot play in the first set, whipping William Lee 6-3. Serving for the match at 5-4 in the second, the hard-serving Sloves stumbled and was broken, eventually losing the set 7-5. The junior would not let the momentum shift to Lee's side though, and he got back at his opponent with another 6-3 set to take the first singles point for the Big Green.
Dinkmeyer also made it two wins on the day with a very impressive 6-4, 6-3 victory over Oli Choo. Choo had upset Dinkmeyer at the ITA Regionals in the fall, but this day belonged to the Dartmouth freshman and his aggressive serve-and-volley style.
Bobba had trouble with Cliff Nguyen at second singles, falling 6-3, 6-0. Paer fared little better with Mark Riddell at fifth singles, as Dartmouth dropped the match 6-2, 6-4.
Thompson closed out his career on top with a victory at sixth singles, which came via a default by Turner after Thompson rallied his way to a 5-4 advantage in the first set.
At fourth singles, Kereshi started out great, grabbing a close first set from Barker 6-4. Kereshi could not hold on to his brilliant play in the second set, and Barker matched the freshman with a 6-4 set of his own. With the third set to decide the match, Kereshi could not regain his first set momentum, and Barker brought Harvard to victory with a 6-2 third set win.
For the Crimson, the win allowed them to tie Columbia for the Ivy League title and secured them the league's automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament by virtue of their win against the Lions.
Thus Dartmouth closed out its season at 8-10 overall, and a winless 0-7 in the Ivy League. Despite the second consecutive winless Ivy campaign, a feat that hadn't happened since 1947-48, the season provided some bright spots.
The young group of freshmen performed extremely well all year and got a good deal of seasoning which they will bring to bear next year against their Ivy foes who will graduate greater portions of their teams.
