Rural Kentucky is the home of bluegrass music, a mix of blues and country. Fittingly, the Harvard men's tennis team was singing the blues after its trip to Lexington, where it lost two straight dual meets.
On Saturday, Harvard took on Indiana. In what was supposed to be its first outdoor match of the year, the Crimson were forced indoors when the rain came.
The doubles team of junior Andrew Styperek and sophomore William Lee won 8-5 in their No. 2 match against George McGill and Milan Rakvika, and while the team of co-captain Joe Green and freshman Dave Lingman dropped their match, the Crimson salvaged the doubles point with a win at No.3. Sophomore Cillie Swart and junior Mike Rich defeated Rahman Smiley and Paul Jacobson, 9-7, to put Harvard up 1-0 going in to the singles.
Lingman lost at No. 2, 6-1, 6-2 to Ian Arons, in what was the Hoosier's easiest match of the day. The Crimson won the first set in four of the remaining five matches. Lee smoked Gabe Montilla, 6-2, but dropped the next two sets.
Green, at No. 1, won the first set in a tiebreaker over Makvika but then got blown off the court, 6-0, 6-1. The next match to finish was at No. 4, where junior Anthony Barker split the first two sets with McGill before getting goose-egged in the final set.
"He was just a better player than me," Green said of Makvika.
At that point the match was won, with Indiana having the 4-1 advantage. Jacobson beat Styperek in three sets, but Swart won 7-6, 3-6, 7-5 over Smiley to get the final count to 5-2.
Missing was Green's co-captain, John Doran, the usual No. 1 player, suffering a knee injury. The injury was the same one that had kept him out all winter and while he had seen some limited action later, he didn't get a chance this weekend.
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