With a flawless regular season and an Eastern championship securely under his belt. Harvard tennis coach Jack Barnaby will take four players to the New England Intercollegiate Tournament at Amherst today trying to repeat last year's team championship.
A college may enter four singles players and two doubles combinations is the tournament, with each victory counting one point for the team.
Harvard, the customary winner of team honors, will be favored again this year. Yale and Dartmouth, both with considerable strength near the top of their ladders, will most likely challenge the Crimson.
In the singles competition for Harvard will be sophomores Bernie Adelsberg and Jose Gonzales and seniors Richle Friedman and Clive Kileff. Captain and number one player Dave Benjamin, a semi-finalist last year, will not enter this time.
Eli Won
Yale junior Mike Waltz won the tournament last year by successively defeating Kileff, Benjamin, and Dartmouth's Charlie Hoevier all in long three-net matches, won by a single service break at 5-4 in the final set.
Hoevler, a lefty with a wildly spinning twist serve and sharp volleys, defeated the equally aggressive Waltz earlier this season in a team match. These two stand stop the field, with Adelsberg and Kileff just a little below. Gonzalez and Friedman should not be discounted as factors, however, after their impressive match play of the past few weeks.
Doubles
In the doubles, Yale's Mike Brooks and Waltz should be the top seed. They reached the finals last year, bowing there to Harvard's powerful duo of Chum Steele and Dean Peckham. Hoevler also is quite a doubles player, and the Dartmouth first team may prove stronger than the Yale pair.
To strengthen Harvard's first doubles, Barnaby has teamed Gonzalez with Brian Davis, a powerful off-hand player with sharp volleys and lightning reflexes. Barnaby has tried this combination twice in team matches, but they may not have played together long enough to react in co-ordination like the Yale or Dartmouth pairs. Adelsberg and Kileff -- the slugger and the runner -- form Harvard's incongruous second doubles team.
The tournament will be a three-day affair, including players from all the major colleges in the New England area.
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