BEVERLY, Mass.—Senior Alexander Merson (Palisades Park, N.J.) recorded wins in both singles and doubles but No. 12 Babson College suffered its first loss of the season falling to No. 3 Tufts University, 6-1, in non-conference men's tennis action on Sunday inside the Bass River Tennis Club. 

Babson slips to 5-1 on the year with the loss while Tufts is now 2-0 on the season. 

Merson and first-year Maxim Zlobinsky (Greenvale, N.Y.) rolled to a 6-0 victory over sophomore Kaetan Mehta (Edmonton, Alberta) and senior Javier Gonzalez (Valencia, Spain) at number two, but the Jumbos secured the doubles point with a pair of close wins at number one and number three. The 12th-ranked pairing of seniors Alex Ganchev (Plovdiv, Bulgaria) and Sacha Maes (New York, N.Y.) edged Babson's third-ranked duo of sophomores Edward Wang (Burr Ridge, Ill.) and Sebastian Mendoza (Weston, Fla.) 6-4, while junior Louis Bourn (Geneva, Switzerland) and first-year Max Lidman (Stockholm, Sweden) dropped a 6-4 decision to sophomore Stavros Mastrogamvrakis (Athens, Greece) and first-year Jackson Rich (Wayland, Mass.) at number three. 

All six singles matches were decided in straight sets with Merson, who is ranked 17th in Division III, picking up the lone victory for the Beavers by outlasting Gonzalez 7-6, 7-5 at number one. Zlobinsky suffered a 6-3, 6-3 loss to 18th-ranked junior Garv Bahl (Dubai, United Arab Emirates) at number four, while Lidman was downed 6-2, 6-4 at number six by Mehta. 

Babson returns to action on March 18 when it takes on Whitman at 3:30 p.m. ET in Claremont, Calif., while Tufts is MIT on Friday at 4 p.m.