Harvard's tennis team, gaining momentum and confidence for next week's showdown with Pennsylvania, eased to an impressive 8-1 victory at Amherst yesterday afternoon to increase its Northern match winning streak to three.

Confronted with a reasonable challenge from a squad that had placed second to it at the New England championships last year, the Crimson swept five singles matches and a pair of doubles contests in straight sets, losing only at the top spot on the ladder, where Amherst's talented captain Mike Pelletier defeated Bill Washauer 6-4, 7-5

"Washaeur suffered from inconsistency and Pelletier took immediate advantage of it," Harvard coach Jack Barnaby said last night. "Still, Bill played a good match, since he kept fighting and thinking of ways to compensate for the areas in which his game was off."

Pelletier, who advanced as far as the quarterfinals at the New Englands last year, will most likely be a favorite there next month, along with Washauer, Yale's Pete Heydemann and Holy Cross' John Hughes.

Similar Ease

Elsewhere on the ladder, however, the Crimson captured its matches with the same ease that it had experienced in routs of M. I. T. and Navy last week.

At number two. Amherst's Tom Suher who had won one of the Jeff's two match points last year against Harvard, lost in straight sets to sophomore Dave Fish, 6-2, 6-2, Junior Chris Nielsen followed with a 6-3, 7-5 triumph over junior Mark Coffin at three, and classmate Joe Cavanagh, who is rapidly approaching top form, whipped sophomore Tom Ryan at number four, 6-2, 6-1.

Bill Brock took another at five with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over John Ahearn, and Harvard captain Butch Kawakami, who had been bothered with a sore shoulder last week, wrapped up the Crimson triumph with a 6-2, 6-1 disposal of Len Bicknell at the sixth slot.

Kawakami teamed with sophomore Rick Devereux for a 6-1, 6-2 romp over Bicknell and Ahearn at third doubles, Fish and Cavanagh eased past Suher and Ryan at number two, 6-2, 6-2, and Washauer and Nielsen outlasted Pelletier and Coffin, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3 at the top position to achieve the final 8-1 result.