Harvard's tennis team indicated that it might have to be accorded something more than a spoiler's role in this spring's EITA race by methodically demolishing a better-than-average Navy squad, 9-0, at Cambridge Saturday afternoon.

A chilly, insistent wind forced the matches from Harvard's soft outdoor clay courts to the harder surface of the Palmer Dixon indoor facility, and almost immediately. the Midshipmen were at a disadvantage. Unused to the sometimes tenuous footing, several of the Navy singles players found themselves behind early, and authoritative Crimson volleys never let them come back.

Junior Bill Washauer kept Middie sophomore Gordon Perry running with an aggressive. powerful game, and disposed of him 6-3, 7-5. at number one. And things weren't that much different on the other two courts.

Hampered at first by tightness after an unusually long warm-up. junior Chris Nielsen picked apart Navy's captain, George Galdorisi, with a precise thorough baseline game, and whipped him in straight sets-6-1. 6-3- at number three Galdorisi had won last fall's ECAC singles championship for lower-ladder players.

Bill Brock followed with an easy 6-2. 6-2 triumph over Navy's Hal Cummings at number five, sophomore Ed Devereux breezed by Mike Brown in less than half an hour-6-0. 6-2-at six. and classmate Dave Fish, newly installed at the second position, took Bob Custer in straight sets-6-4, 6-2-to clinch the match.

But even after Crimson coach Jack Barnaby rested his first doubles unit. of Washauer and Nielsen, and pitted the other tandems against higher-ranking Navy entries, the Midshipmen were unable to halt Harvard's momentum.

Junior Joe Cavangh. who had outlasted Navy's Cutler Dawson-4-6, 6-0, 6-1-at the number four slot, teamed with Fish at first doubles and defeated Annapolis highly-regarded pair of Perry and Dawson-6-2. 2-6. 6-2. Devereux and Crimson captain Butch Kawakami secured the eighth Harvard point with a 3-6. 6-3, 6-3 decision over Custer and Galdorisi at the second position, and Brock teamed with senior Bill Ball to whip Brown and AlSwisher at third doubles. 6-3, 6-3.

The triumph. Harvard's second straight and its 19th in a row over the Midshipmen, ties the Crimson for the EITA lead. a position it will probably hold for at least another week and a half. Only one of Harvard's three matches next week is a league contest, and it will send the Crimson against Brown. which Navy defeated 6-3 last Friday at Providence.