Well it has to handle both failure and success. However by borrowing shamelessly from tye, I beat my previous, and if we want to be shamelessly non-strict about it, I can improve again. 
sub f {
$t=pop;$t=$$t{$c>0?l:r}while$c=$$t{d}cmp$_[0]and$t;$t
}

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By my count this is 53 characters.

In reply to Re (tilly) 4: Golf: Tree searching by tilly
in thread Golf: Tree searching by Masem

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