Tinkering With Chemistry Produces Winning Formula

Some things change, and some just don’t. The Harvard men’s tennis team endured its fair share of changes in the doubles competition this weekend at the Murr Center, but one thing remained the same: The Crimson won the overall match. Again. Twice.

The glaring inconsistency on Friday night was in the doubles play. Entering the weekend, Harvard (6-2) had only dropped the doubles point once—in its first match against No. 3 Florida in early February.

“We seem to have some ability to be very competitive in doubles this year, which is really important for us,” Crimson coach David Fish said after his team’s 4-3 defeat of Minnesota, in which the doubles point proved the deciding factor.

Despite winning five points in a row entering this weekend’s contests, Harvard had only swept all three matches once.

In the team’s first six dual meets, the third doubles pairing of senior Chris Chiou and freshman Jack Li went 3-3. The second duo of senior Mark Riddell held a 4-2 mark, having won all four in a row after two early losses. The top-seeded and No. 25 duo of co-captain David Lingman and junior Jonathon Chu boasted a 4-1 record (one of their matches was suspended). The pairings had not changed since the inception of the season.

On Friday night against New Mexico, however, the team struggled. Chu and Lingman took their match by a smooth 8-4 count, but Riddell and Chiu fell 6-8 and Chiou and Li lost 4-8.

“We were bound to lose one—we’ve won five in a row,” Lingman said. “I think the guys just came out yesterday, weren’t totally concentrated, and the other teams did some good things and kind of put some pressure on us.”

For the first time all season, Fish tinkered with his lineup on Saturday against Furman, replacing Chiou and Li with junior Jason Beren and senior George Turner. The duo displayed marked energy, cheering and pumping their fists at nearly every point

Beren and Turner were up 3-0, 5-2 and 7-4 at different points in the match before closing it out 8-5, and the pair’s enthusiasm was contagious, both for the players and the crowd.

Riddell and Chiu took their match 8-4, and Chu and Lingman continued to look steady with an 8-6 victory.

“Doubles is one of those things where it has to do with chemistry and personalities in addition to playing the right play,” Fish said, “and some guys just simply play better with someone than someone else.”

The record of Chu and Lingman—now 6-1—would suggest that the two might, indeed, share that chemistry.

Lingman is the team’s top singles player, ranked No. 48 nationally. Chu plays right beneath him in the second singles spot. Together, the pair is even more potent. Their ranking, which was No. 32 at the commencement of the season, is now No. 25. Chu and Lingman have defeated three doubles teams which are currently ranked, and they have shown nerves of steel, playing four tiebreaks in their seven decisions—and winning three.

“They’ve got a lot to attack with,” Fish said. “They’re both quite savvy as doubles players.

“If they started doing the right things now as a matter of practice, they would be serious contenders as all-Americans. But it just depends [on] whether they do the work right now.”

So what about the future doubles lineups? After all, the squad will be facing four ranked teams in the next month, including No. 4 Stanford and No. 18 Pepperdine.

“It’s not just a question of if we use the right guys. Sometimes it’s the right combinations,” Fish said. “We will continue to work in practice to see what the best doubles combinations are.”