BALTIMORE, MD – Host and 17^th-ranked Johns Hopkins fell 7-2 to ninth-ranked Swarthmore Saturday morning in the Blue Jays' home opener. JHU falls to 5-4 overall and 1-1 in the Centennial Conference. The Garnet improve to 13-1 and 3-0 in the conference.
 
Swarthmore jumped out to a 3-0 lead with three close wins in doubles. Michael Melnikov and Utham Koduri took the first point of the match with an 8-5 win over senior Daniel Ardila and junior Marco Azar at number one. Rushiil Patel and Andres Fente won by the same score over graduate student George Jiang and sophomore Pranav Gadiraju at two. Max Lindstrom and Aadhi Raja closed out doubles play with an 8-6 win over sophomore Allen Gong and freshman Chakor Rajendra at three.
 
The Garnet pushed their lead to 7-0 in the match by winning the first four singles' matches before the Blue Jays took the final two matches. Melnikov won 7-6 (2), 7-5 over Gong at number one. Lindstrom also won a close one, as he edged Ardila 7-6 (8), 6-4 at two. Winston Zhang topped graduate student Hanyu Liu 6-4, 6-1 at four and Lalith Suresh beat Gadiraju 7-6 (4), 6-2 at six. Rajendra earned a point for the Blue Jays when he defeated Kevin Jiang 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (3) at three. Azar also won a three-setter, as he beat Verma 6-3, 6-7 (3), 6-4 at five.
 
Hopkins is back in action on Sunday, April 7 as the Blue Jays face 35^th-ranked Carnegie Mellon in Fredericksburg, VA. The non-conference match is slated for a 12:00 pm start.