CLAREMONT, CA – The ninth-ranked Johns Hopkins men's tennis team dropped a heartbreaker, 5-4, to fourth-ranked Middlebury Thursday afternoon. The Blue Jays slip to 7-2 on the season while the Panthers improve to 6-2.
 
Hopkins took an early 2-1 lead with wins at first and third doubles. Juniors James and Thomas Yu took the first point of the match when they beat Noah Laber and Aidan Harris, 8-2, at first. Neel Epstein and Robby Ward then tied the match with a close 8-6 win over graduate students Mason Liu and Jonathan Zhang at second. Graduate students Joe DeMarco and George Jiang then put the Blue Jays back on top with an 8-6 win at third over Julian Wu and Zihao Yuan.
 
Wu then took the first singles match and tied it at two when he defeated junior Daniel Ardila 6-1, 6-2 at fifth. Laber put the Panthers on top with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Thomas Yu at first. Zhang answered for the Blue Jays with a 6-1, 6-4 win at second over Harris to make it a 3-3 match.
 
Yuan pushed Middlebury back on top with a 6-3, 6-4 victory at sixth over freshman Pranav Gadiraju. Epstein then clinched the win for the Panthers when he beat Liu 7-6 (4), 6-3 at third. James Yu closed out the match with a hard-fought three-set win over Ward, 6-4, 4-6, 1-0 (7).
 
Hopkins wraps up its Spring Break trip on Friday, March 24 with matches against 13^th-ranked Caltech and Whittier.
 
Notes: Thomas Yu is now tied for 16^th in program history with 96 career wins (48 singles, 48 doubles).