M. Tennis Splits on West Coast

The Harvard men's tennis team headed to California for its annual spring break road trip and came within only a few games of shaking up the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) national team rankings.

The 28th-ranked Crimson scored easy victories over UC-Santa Barbara and Idaho, but it was the 4-3 losses to No. 19 Fresno State and No. 8 Southern Methodist that provided the excitement. The relatively young Crimson squad faced off against nationally ranked singles opponents in both those matches.

On Tuesday, March 27, Harvard met its first West Coast opponent, traveling to Fresno, CA, for a battle against the No. 19 Bulldogs. Perhaps perturbed by the cloudless Pacific weather, the Crimson came close but could not overcome in a 4-3 loss.

Head Coach David Fish decided to go with several different doubles combinations to start out the match. Nothing worked. The new pair of sophomore Oli Choo and freshman Cliff Nguyen fell 8-3 at No. 3 doubles, and then the usual No. 3 team of co-captain Anthony Barker and freshman George Turner went down next, losing at the No. 1 spot to the Bulldogs' Peter Luczak and David Mullins.

The doubles point was already lost, but the other new combo of junior William Lee and freshman Mark Riddell made a strong effort, losing only 9-7 to Sean Cooper and Nick Fustar, the 40th-ranked doubles team in the country.

With Harvard down 1-0, the singles became a fight to the finish. Nguyen, at No. 1 singles, got double goose-egged 6-0, 6-0 by Luczak, Fresno State's top player and No. 15 in the nation. Lee, however, put Harvard on the board with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Mullins.

Things started to look bleak when Turner blew a second-set lead and lost 6-4, 6-4 at No. 3 singles, but freshman Ryan Browne won a big 7-6, 7-6 match at No. 6 singles over Alex Krohn. The deciding match for the Bulldogs came at No. 5, where Barker and Alex Menichini were tied at a set apiece. Menichini then blew by Barker, 6-1, in the third set, for the win, giving Fresno State the overall victory. Choo later won at No. 2 to make the final score 4-3.

Two days later, the Crimson traveled to Santa Barbara where it would face its next three opponents. Harvard squared off against host UCSB on Thursday and fittingly made the Gauchos look as if they belonged on the pampas rather than the tennis courts.

Barker and Turner won at No. 1 doubles, and the No. 2 pair of Lee and Riddell earned its first victory, taking out Michael Faust and Mike Placek 8-4. With the doubles point in hand, the Crimson turned its attention to singles.

At No. 6 singles, Riddell scored the first win, beating David Angert 6-2, 6-2.

Turner then defeated UCSB's Marcio Pepe 6-4, 6-1 at No. 4 to put Harvard within one point of winning the match.

Lee did just that when he narrowly edged out Faust at No. 3 singles, 6-4, 7-6(4).

The final three matches made the final score 5-2 in favor of the Crimson.

Harvard remained at the Cathedral Oaks Tennis Club in Santa Barbara to face off against the Idaho Vandals next. Known more as a potato powerhouse than a tennis contender, Idaho was able to win nothing more than the doubles point.

Fish used another different doubles set-up, but the results were upsetting at least in the first run. Junior Dalibor Snyder paired with Nguyen at No. 3 doubles but lost 8-2 to Stephen DeSilva and Fredrick von Sydow. Coupled with a win at No. 1 doubles, the Vandals got themselves the only point they would get in the match.

Harvard won every set of every singles match to put Idaho away. Riddell finished up first again at No. 6, winning 6-1, 6-0. Barker, at No. 5 singles, put away von Sydow 6-3, 6-4 a few minutes later to put the Crimson up 2-1.

Half an hour later, a slew of matches concluded which gave the Crimson the win. Choo finished off DeSilva 6-4, 6-4 at No. 3, and Lee put the nail in the coffin for Harvard with a 6-0, 7-5 victory over Amad Wakalkar at No. 4 singles. Nguyen and Turner finished moments later.

On Saturday, Harvard faced its toughest opponent of the season, the No. 8 SMU Mustangs. It was a tough fight against one of the best programs in the country, and the Crimson came close to an upset.

Harvard started the day dropping the doubles point for the third time on the spring break trip. SMU, which features only one American-born athlete, quickly disposed of the Crimson's doubles squads. Snyder and Choo fell first at No. 2, 8-2, to Krystian Pfeiffer and Lukasz Senczyszyn.

Barker and Turner faced the unfortunate task of taking on the 8th-best doubles tandem in the country, Jon Wallmark and Johan Brunstrom, They also lost 8-2 to give SMU the doubles point.

Nguyen lost at No. 1 singles, 6-2, 6-2, to the fourth best collegiate tennis player in America, Zimbabwe native Genius Chidzikwe. Turner then lost at No. 4, 6-3, 6-4 to Alex Rudzinski to put Harvard one point away from elimination.

Riddell continued his excellent play at No. 6 and kept the Crimson in the match with a 7-6, 7-6 victory over Ryan Mauck. Choo then won in three sets, 7-5, 3-6, 6-2 over Pfeiffer at the No. 3 slot.

The Mustangs would clinch, however, when Senczyszyn defeated Barker at No. 5, 7-5, 6-3.

Harvard had lost, but its best performance of the day was still to come.

Lee was playing Wallmark, a native of Sweden and the No. 24 player in the country. Wallmark had defeated Lee in a third set tiebreak at last year's ITA Indoor Team Nationals, and the memory was clearly fresh in both players' minds.

Lee took the first set 6-4, but Wallmark got right back with a 7-5 win in the second. The third set would be pure drama.

Lee went up 3-0 after a break, but Wallmark broke back and knotted the score at 3-3. The two opponents kept on serve for the next five games. Serving at 5-6, Lee had literally run himself out of his shoes, which were now unusable.

He appealed to his teammates and to the crowd for a pair of size 11s, and finally Coach Fish donated his shoes.

"These have a lot of wisdom, but I'm not certain how much speed is in them," Fish said.

Lee held serve and then ran over Wallmark, 7-2, in the tiebreaker to exact his revenge.

The Crimson's record now stands at 8-7 as it prepares to move into the Ivy League season. It will host Cornell on Friday at 2pm and Columbia Saturday at noon at the Beren Tennis Center.