The doubles point would come down to the first court, featuring two nationally-ranked pairs in Columbia’s 36th-ranked Ashok Narayana and Max Schnur and Harvard’s No. 65 MacMaster and Denis Nguyen. MacMaster and Nguyen pulled off an 8-5 upset to give the Crimson the doubles point.
In singles, Denis Nguyen handily defeated the Lions’ No. 52 Winston Lin on the first court, 6-1, 6-3, to put Harvard up 2-0. Columbia bounced back by taking down the freshmen, Hu and Lam, to tie the overall score at 2-2.
Steinroeder captured a 6-2, 6-4 win at No. 3, but Chaudhuri lost on the second court. The overall score was knotted at 3-3, and the last match remaining was No. 4 singles. Andy Nguyen lost the first set, but took home the next two for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 win to close it out for the Crimson.
Although it is early, the team feels very confident in its ability to have a successful league season.
“We’re very excited, and ready for every team,” Chaudhuri said. “But we’re definitely taking it match-by-match. We have a lot of tough teams left, and Ivy matches always seem to be close.”
—Staff writer Justin C. Wong can be reached at justinwong@college.harvard.edu