Yale Daily News

The best cure for a tough loss is a decisive win to follow it.

The men's tennis team beat Dartmouth (8-13, 0-6) 5-2 Sunday, but the victory was bittersweet in the wake of a tough loss to Harvard Saturday that took the Elis (6-13, 2-4 Ivy) out of contention for the Ivy title.

"We came out pretty energized against Dartmouth even though we had just lost our chance at winning an Ivy League championship," Yale No. 1 Brandon Wai '07 said. "It was definitely a good way to end the weekend after coming off that loss to Harvard."

On Saturday, the Bulldogs just could not break through the strong play of the Crimson (12-11, 4-2), despite impressive efforts on both singles and doubles bracket.

Harvard broke out strong and early, winning all three doubles matches. Yale's No. 1 doubles team, Wai and Ryan Murphy '05, fell 8-5 to the Cantabs. Chris Lawler '06 and Rowan Reynolds '06 fought to the bitter end before losing an extremely close 9-7 match in the No. 2 doubles match. Milosz Gudzowski '06 and Rory Green '08 barely lost their No. 3 doubles match, falling 8-6.

The singles play went pretty much the same as the doubles, but Gudzowski broke the Elis' silence and won the No. 4 singles match in straight sets, 6-1, 6-2, against Harvard's Shantanu Dhaka.

"I wasn't very [pleased] with my win that day," Gudzowski said. "Once you're in college, tennis becomes a team sport. My win means nothing if we don't win as a team."

Wai dropped his No. 1 singles match 6-2, 6-2 against Jonathan Chu while Murphy, Reynolds, Green and Lawler lost the No. 2, 3, 5 and 6 singles matches, respectively.

The Bulldogs are now out of the running for this season's Ancient Eight total, but that is not to say that the squad will end the season without a fight. The Elis have their final match of the season against No. 36 Brown (22-5, 6-0) Thursday.

"Brown has been undefeated in the Ivies this year," Lawler said. "But right now the team really has nothing to lose, and we're looking forward to the chance at breaking Brown's streak."