Lingman Advances To Semis in Virginia

“Not too bad,” was the assessment Harvard men’s tennis co-captain David Lingman gave about the Crimson’s performance this weekend at the 2003 Virginia Invitational Tennis Tournament.

Harvard split its roster between two concurrent tournaments, one in Charlottesville, Va. and the other at Brown University.

The Crimson turned in several great performances this weekend, highlighted by Lingman’s run to the semifinals of the Singles Flight A tournament. He lost 6-1, 0-6, 6-4 to the eventual champion, Old Dominion’s Izak van der Merwe.

“[I] made a couple bad decisions at the end, but it was a good match overall,” Lingman said.

Senior Mark Riddell lost in the first round of the double-elimination singles tourney to William & Mary’s Sean Kelleher, 4-6, 7-6, 7-6, but won two matches in the consolation bracket before retiring due to a minor foot injury after dropping the first set of the fourth round to top-seeded Stephen Mitchell of Alabama.

Senior Chris Chiou dropped his first-round match to Virginia’s Rylan Rizza, 6-1, 6-4, but then cruised all the way to the final of the consolation draw, winning three matches en route to a thrilling three-set match with Mitchell that featured a ten-point tiebreaker in place of a third set. Chiou eventually fell, 6-4, 3-6, 12-10.

Senior George Turner won his first-round match against NC State’s Val Banada, 7-5, 6-1, but lost in straight sets to Wake Forest’s DJ Spice, 6-0, 7-5.

In the Singles Flight B, freshman Jack Li displayed considerable promise by winning the tournament, losing only one set in five matches and defeating Wake Forest’s Todd Paul, 6-3, 6-4, in the final.

In the process, he exacted some revenge for junior teammate Jason Beren, who fared well but lost to Paul in the semifinals.

Beren paired with Turner in the Doubles Flight B tournament, where they lost in the first round to UVA but took three straight matches to capture the consolation title, besting Adriano Mello and Nate Grover of Old Dominion in the final, 8-6.

Li and Chiou reached the final of the Doubles Flight B, where they fell 8-5 to William & Mary’s Jeffrey Kader and Alex Fish.

According to assistant coach Peter Mandeau, who assumed responsibility for the squad at Brown, Harvard sent its top players to Virginia..

“We just wanted to get some playing time for the freshmen,” Mandeau said. “This weekend gave us a chance to see what our best lineup is.”

Head coach David Fish ’72 was optimistic, stating that the team competed well.

“I told them that the rule was ‘not to come home injured,’ and I think we accomplished that,” Fish said.

The Crimson competes next week at the ECAC Championship, which is the qualifying event for the 16-team National Indoor Championship in February and will be played at Flushing Meadow, N.Y.

“There is bound to be some of the toughest competition in the nation, but I think we can win,” Lingman said

“They might peg us as the team to beat, which puts a target on our back,” Fish added. “But team chemistry is more important at this point.”