Tennis Boasts Strong Individual, Team Performances

The Harvard men’s tennis team had a strong showing last week by freshman Jonathan Chu at the National Indoor Championships, while the tandem of co-captain Dalibor Snyder and sophomore Mark Riddell captured the doubles title at the Dartmouth Big Green Invitational.

“It was a new experience being on my own,” Chu said. “It was another learning experience for me, a realization of how close Harvard is to the elite teams such as Stanford and all the California schools.”

In the biggest victory of his collegiate career thus far, Chu started the day by eliminating San Diego State’s Oliver Maiberger, ranked third in the tournament and 13th in the nation, 6-1, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (11), in the first round of singles consolation after overcoming two match points in the third set tiebreak.

After an easy first set, Chu was serving for the match when he was broken at love by Maiberger to even the score at 5-5 in the second set. Maiberger eventually won the tiebreaker and went up a break in third set action, placing Chu in a 2-0 hole.

Chu broke back and evened the score to 2-2. The two then held serve to force the final tiebreaker. Maiberger had two chances to win with his serve at 7-6 and 10-9, but Chu was able to pull out the victory with a tiebreak score of 13-11.

In first-round action, Chu lost in straight sets to the No. 2 seed, Tulane’s Michael Kogan after a slow start. The 6-2, 6-4 defeat placed Chu in the consolation bracket.

Chu narrowly missed his second upset of the tournament on Friday while facing Stanford’s Scott Lipsky in the singles consolation bracket of the Omni Hotels National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, held in Farmers Branch, TX.

Facing Lipsky in his second match decided by a third-set tiebreaker of the day, the Crimson freshman ultimately fell 4-6, 6-2, 6-7 (13-15) just a few hours after upsetting Maiberger. Lipsky was down 4-1 in the first set but regrouped to take the first set 6-4.

Chu came back to win the second set 6-2, setting the scene for a third match showdown. In the tiebreak, Chu was unable to capitalize on his three match points with service, eventually losing to Lipsky, who is ranked No. 57 in the ITA National Singles rankings.

“The other guys are a lot more physically mature, so the strength factor and experience at a high level were also determinants in how things ended the way they did,” Chu said.

Chu earned his invite to the Omni Hotels National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships by reaching the finals of the Omni Hotels/ITA Regional Championships, held at Princeton on October.

Meanwhile, the rest of the men’s team traveled to Hanover, NH, to compete in the Dartmouth Invitational.

In an all-Harvard final, the combination of Snyder and Riddell, playing together for the first time in competition, captured the doubles championship on Monday by defeating teammates sophomore Chris Chiou and freshman Brian Wan 8-6.

“It was a good opportunity for us to play together, and it was a nice change of pace,” Riddell said. “This was our last fall tournament, and it was a great way to finish the fall for us, giving us momentum heading into the offseason.”

Snyder and Riddell’s path to the championship entailed defeating another Harvard pair, freshmen Dan Haimovic and Brent Siaontz 8-4 in the semifinals earlier that same day. The freshmen duo had mounted a surprising 8-6 victory in the round of 16 over the first-seeded pair of Akshay Jagsdale and Greg Schweitzer of Rutgers.

Chiou and Wan entered the finals having defeated the Rutgers duo of Brook Demming and Kevin Beilin in a come-from-behind 9-7 victory.

The men’s tennis team will not see action again until this coming January, when the Harvard Winter Invitational takes place at the Murr Center January 26-28.