Tennis: Princeton fares well in New York

Richardson continued his dominant play the following day as he defeated Dartmouth’s Alex Centenari 6-1, 6-3. He then beat Marist’s Matt Himmelsbach 6-2, 6-0 to advance to the finals of the C singles bracket. Richardson also continued to play well alongside Yegya-Raman, as they overwhelmed Henrique Moreno and Dan Salomon of New Jersey Institute of Technology 8-2 and eliminated Mark Kremheller and Bjorn Merinder of Fairfield 8-3 to advance to the finals of the D doubles bracket.

Faust was also successful on Saturday, advancing to the B singles finals by defeating Harvard’s Andy Nguyen, the No. 1 seed of the B flight, 6-3, 6-4 and eliminating Michael Laser of Dartmouth 6-3, 6-3.

Siow experienced less success on Saturday, falling to Milo Hauk of St. John’s 7-6(5), 6-1 in a match that featured a tightly contested back-and-forth set. Siow and Crutchfield were also eliminated Saturday by the Brown duo Mike Hill and Tim Klanke, with a score of 8-4. Despite being eliminated on the second day of play, Siow said he noticed improvement in his performance from last week.

“The first tournament is always hard because you want to start off the season on a good note, and I think it takes a couple matches to really get accustomed to playing matches again because it’s a lot different than practice,” Siow said. “I felt this weekend I executed my patterns a lot better than last week, and I was making the right decisions and, even in the match I lost, I had chances to win.”

Princeton’s success ended in the finals, as Yale’s Erik Blumenkranz defeated Faust 6-4, 6-1 and Harvard’s Aba Omodele-Lucien defeated Richardson in a tightly contested match, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3. Richardson and Yegya-Raman also fell to Penn’s Jason Lin and Jason Magnes, 8-4.

While numerous Tigers had a successful tournament, perhaps the most surprising result was Richardson’s. Heading into the finals, Richardson had not lost a set, and he only dropped six games on Saturday. Richardson’s dominant performance — alongside solid contributions from fellow freshmen Augie Bloom and Dan Davies — revealed the strength of the recruiting class.

“This weekend it was really nice to see Dan Richardson make it to the finals in both singles and doubles,” Siow said. “He has a really big game. His first match was against the No. 2 seed from Harvard, Casey McMaster, who was the top freshman coming in, and he beat him. After that, Dan won his next two matches, dropping only six games. He was playing the best I’ve seen him play — granted we’ve only competed for two weeks. He also played very well in the final, but unfortunately he came up a little short in a close three-setter against Aba, who played No. 2 for Harvard last year. Augie also had a good tournament. Him and Matt Spindler have been doing very well as a doubles team in both the Farnsworth and U.S Open tournaments.”

The strong contributions from the freshmen also revealed the pure depth of the team, which has been an issue in recent years.

“We had a lot of good results throughout,” Siow explained. “We had a couple guys make it to the finals — unfortunately they lost — but it showed that as a team we’re playing well and are really a force to be reckoned with, because, out of the Ivies, we had the best showing besides Yale.”

The men look to build off the success of this weekend as they head back to practice in preparation for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Regionals in three weeks.

Princeton resumes competition in two weeks when it heads to New York to participate in the Columbia Invitational.

The women’s team also competed this weekend, as it sent select players to Penn’s Cissie Leary Invitational. Sophomore Monica Chow and junior Rachel Saiontz advanced to the quarterfinals in a doubles draw of 32 by winning their first two matches before falling to Cornell’s Geraldine Leong and Ryann Young 8-5. Saiontz also advanced to the quarterfinals in the singles draw of 64, eliminating all of her competitors in straight sets before withdrawing from her match against Jillian Santos of Binghamton due to illness.

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Next on the schedule for the Princeton women is the ITA All-American tournament in Pacific Palisades, Calif., in two weeks. The Tigers will send No. 49 junior Hilary Bartlett, who is also a staff writer for The Daily Princetonian, to compete in the main singles bracket as well as the main doubles bracket, alongside senior Taylor Marable.