The men's tennis team was busy this past weekend, sending co-captain Phil Charm '06 and Dan Hanegby '07 to the ITA National Indoors Championships and Chris Lee '09, Basu Ratnam '09 and Scott Blumenkranz '08 to the Dartmouth Invitational.
Charm and Hanegby managed to reach the second round of the consolation bracket at Indoors, while Lee and Blumenkranz reached the quarterfinals at Dartmouth in singles and later as a doubles combination.
Charm and Hanegby earned themselves a place at the National Indoors by winning the ITA Regional Doubles Title two weeks ago. Going into the tournament, the pair was well aware of the challenges it would face.
"It's the most competitive tournament in the country," Charm said of the tournament, which featured the country's top 16 doubles teams.
"The competition there is really strong," said Head Coach Jay Harris. "It was a great honor just to go to the tournament."
In the opening round, Charm and Hanegby were defeated 8-5 by Matt Baccarani and Patrick Thompson of Ball State University, but the duo was not discouraged by the loss.
"They didn't play a great first match," Harris said. "But they played better and better as the tournament went on."
In the consolation bracket, Charm and Hanegby won their first match, defeating Ivor Lovrak and Pedro Rico of Pepperdine University 8-5. In the semifinals, the pair lost an 8-4 match to KC Corkery and James Pade of Stanford University. Corkery and Pade went on to win the consolation bracket and are, according to Harris, among the top two or three doubles teams in the country.
"They were just a better team," Harris said.
"We were hoping to do more, but we're happy with what we accomplished," Charm said.
Meanwhile, at the Dartmouth Invita-tional, the Bears failed to advance past the quarterfinals in any of their matches. "Those guys definitely showed their inexperience," Harris said. "We wanted to challenge them, and they definitely got a lot out of that experience. It was a toughening-up process."
Competing in A singles, the third-seeded Lee took his first-round match in straight sets, 6-3, 7-5 against Ari Gayer of Dartmouth. In his quarterfinal match against Jonathan Leslie of McGill University, Lee lost the first set 6-3 but bounced back to win the second set 7-6 (0). Unfortunately, Lee was unable to come away victorious in the closely contested match, as Leslie barely won the third-set breaker 10-8.
Lee was not the only one to lose a tight match during the tournament. Ratnam took on Arjun Vaidya of Rutgers Univer-sity in the first-round match in A singles. Despite winning the first set 7-6 (2), Ratnam dropped the second set 6-3 and the third-set breaker 11-9.
In B singles, Blumenkranz was the No. 1 seed, advancing to the quarterfinals with a bye. But in his quarterfinal match, he fell to Robbie Lim of Dartmouth 6-4, 6-3.
"We didn't play our best," Lee said of the Bears' singles performances.
Doubles play featured yet another quarterfinal loss for the Bears. Blumen-kranz and Lee defeated Brett Teolis and Sean Tully of the University of New Hampshire 8-6 in the first round, but then lost 8-4 to Alfredo Fernandez-Concha and Randall Smalley of Lehigh University in the next round.
"We have lots to improve," Lee said. "Our energy could be a little higher in doubles. We lost our concentration."
The Bears will not compete again until January, but Charm kept the team's weekend performance in perspective.
"We have such a long season," he said. "It's hard to pace yourself. You don't want to be playing your best in November, when the most important part of the season isn't until the spring. You have to look at it as a progression, with a final destination in mind."
