John Steel, who plays number one singles for Dartmouth, is a lot like Mark "the Bird" Fidrych. Fidrych talks to baseballs; Steel talks to tennis balls, tennis racquets, and himself. The Bird lives in Evansville, Ind., John Steel lives at Dartmouth. Both of them win. Sometimes, anyway.

Yesterday was Steel's turn to win, as he came from behind to nip the Crimson's own top player, Don Pompan, 6-7, 7-5, 7-6. I couldn't tell you when Fidrych will win again.

Oh yeah, Harvard won the match, 7-1.

The contest between Pompan and Steel dragged on for nearly three hours, and when it ended the crowd had thinned from a season-high 18 to about six. Those who stayed saw Pompan play probably his best tennis of the year. But they saw John Steel play the best tennis of his life.

Steel's thundering serves soundly defeated Pompan. With the Big Green player pounding out the northern New Hampshire equivalent of Titan II missiles, all Pompan could do was duck and swing. That strategy worked pretty well--if you don't count the seven aces--but he finally lost in the third set tiebreaker, 5-2.

By that time, though, the match was long over, Roughly 45 minutes before, Mike Terner had clinched the win in the Crimson's number three spot with a close-your-eyes-and-come-from-way-behind victory over Alfredo Riefkohl.

Riefkohl, who is ranked above Terner, took early command of the contest, cruising to a 6-3 win in the opening set. About the only points that Terner got in that first stanza came from Riefkohl's mistakes. In the second set, with Riefkohl visibly tiring, the yardling reversed the margin of victory, and then hung on to take the third set and the match, 7-5.

With Howard Sands out of singles competition for the second consecutive match, Warren Grossman picked up the slack at number two and scratched out a squeaker over Rob Stein, 7-6, 7-5. Grossman bounced back from a service break at 5-4 in the second set to clinch the victory for the Crimson.

Captain Bob Horne had no problem with Mark Jeffrey, outplaying him to the tune of 6-4, 6-3. Adam Beren looked like he had the easiest match of the day, trouncing Greg Hartman, 6-2, 6-3.

At number six, Greg Kirsch, the only senior on the Crimson squad, found himself down 2-5 early in his bout with Mark Salter. But that was before the Big Green started doing anything wrong. Once Salter made his first mistake the match was all Kirsch. The Crimson won it going away, 7-6, 6-2.