No. 12 W. Tennis Splits With Top Teams

Youth stole the show for the Harvard women’s tennis team on Friday, but it was age and experience which ultimately felled the squad on Saturday as the Crimson won 4-3 and then lost 3-4 in the consolation rounds of the USTA/ITA National Women’s Team Indoor Championships in Madison, Wisc.

Coming off the extended Harvard exam period and only one match into the spring season, the No. 12 Crimson faced two top-10 opponents in a tournament that featured many of the nation’s top programs. Harvard came away with mixed results after three demanding days of play.

No. 12 Harvard 4, No. 13 Kentucky 3

On Friday morning, only a day removed from a 6-1 drubbing by No. 4 Georgia in the first round of the main draw, the Crimson set up to serve against No. 13 Kentucky.

Following last Thursday’s 9-8 (3) loss to the Bulldogs—which lost 5-0 to No. 2 Stanford in the tournament finals—the Crimson’s top doubles team of junior co-captains Susanna Lingman and Courtney Bergman had a relatively smooth 8-4 victory over the Wildcats. Harvard’s second doubles duo followed suit with an identical win as Harvard clinched the doubles point.

“We played some pretty strong doubles,” freshman Preethi Mukundan, a singles player, said of her teammates. “Everyone here plays really smart doubles.”

The singles victories did not come quite as easily, though, as the Wildcats put up an even fight. Kentucky took the top two matches—each coming with a first set tiebreak—from Lingman and junior Alexis Martire.

Harvard did manage to secure three of the six singles points on the strength of its underclassmen.

Sophomore Eva Wang, Mukundan and her fellow-freshman Cindy Chu all took their matches in a total of just seven sets. These wins, added to the all-important doubles point, secured the overall 4-3 triumph.

“Our freshman did awesome this week,” Bergman said. “Against Kentucky, the [whole match] came down to [Mukundan’s point], and she won pretty soundly.

“I think everyone, in general, had to step up, but especially the freshman, who [have] basically no match experience, stood out.”

The 4-3 final score would swing in the other direction on Saturday as the team lost a painfully close match to No. 10 UNC.

No. 10 UNC 4, No. 12 Harvard 3

Harvard’s doubles play began solidly, as the Crimson pairs swept their three matches in heart-stopping fashion 9-8 (5), 8-6 and 9-7, respectively. But UNC prevailed in singles play, taking four of the six matches.

Bergman called the day’s event “a really tight match,” adding that “we definitely could have—should have—won the match. We had a couple matches where people won the first set and were up [but ultimately lost].”

Bergman was referring to both Lingman’s first-seed match, 6-3, 6-7 (6), 4-6, and Mukundan’s at No. 5, 6-3, 2-6, 3-6. Lingman held three match points in her second-set tiebreak but promptly dropped five straight points to lose the second set. She was then dispatched with a tight 6-4 third set.

With the overall score knotted 3-3, all the pressure lay on Chu’s shoulders, and as the freshman played the day’s last match against veteran Tar Heel senior Kendrick Bunn, it seemed that the feisty upstart might actually prevail twice.

Chu served for the first set at 5-4, but her opponent’s experience proved too much, and Chu ultimately lost the deciding match 7-5, 6-4.

Bergman was quick not to place any blame.

“Regardless of who it is, anyone in the top six of the [singles] lineup is pretty hard when you’re playing a top-10 team,” she said. “It was a little disappointing, but we definitely should have won, so that…builds our confidence.”

Mukundan agreed.

“We had a really strong showing against three of the top teams in the country,” she said. “We beat one, and we came close to the others, and it was just a matter of a few points that we lost [to UNC].”

Next up for the Crimson will be a Valentine’s Day weekend tour of Illinois, during which the squad will challenge both the University of Illinois and Northwestern.