M. Tennis Takes Ivy Title With Wins

It certainly wasn’t your grandmother’s country club tennis match. Unless your grandmother tailgates. And carries around a cardboard cutout of her favorite player’s head mounted on a shorn hockey stick.

No, the standing-room-only crowd which packed Brown’s Pizzitola Sports Center to watch No. 22 Harvard defeat the No. 50 Bears 5-2 was raucous—and, at times, unkind. But it did shape what Crimson co-captain Cliff Nguyen declared “the most exciting match of my career.”

From the very introduction of the Brown players—done WWE-style with a booming loudspeaker and overhead lights which flashed as each player was introduced—this match was different. The four Pizzitola courts, located on the fourth floor of the athletic complex, literally shook with the energy of the hundreds of fans crowded between the courts.

And then there was the fact that this dual match would, for all practical purposes, crown the 2004 Ivy champion. The Crimson (15-6, 5-0 Ivy) and Brown (16-5, 4-1) sat tied atop the Ivy standings before the match, and though both still had to face Yale and Dartmouth before the season ended, neither competitor was expected to pose any threat.

So Friday’s winner would, almost certainly, be the only squad undefeated in Ivy play—and with the title would come an automatic NCAA tournament berth.

The Brown fans seemed well aware of the match’s significance.

“You’re so lucky to be able to play in an event like that,” said Harvard coach David Fish ’72. “I know it was chaos, and it felt somewhat like a free-for-all, but...what a thrill for our guys to be able to play in something like that.”

And from the very beginning, the dual match was thrilling.

Junior Jonathan Chu and sophomore Brandon Chiu began the doubles competition with an 8-5 win, the final shot a net-cord volley. The Bears evened things up quickly, though, felling senior Chris Chiou and Nguyen. The Crimson duo had held a perfect 7-0 record before the 8-2 loss.

And so the doubles point fell on the shoulders of senior Mark Riddell and co-captain David Lingman. Though down 7-5, the Crimson pair mounted a gutsy comeback and pushed the decisive match to a tiebreak.

“Mark and I have played a lot of doubles before,” Lingman explained, “and we’ve had a lot of close matches. I think last year, we won three matches in a row when we were down match point, so when we were down a break [on Friday], we knew that we had been close in the set.

“With everybody coming and watching, I think it just focused us in.”

That experience proved vital, as the two secured a quick 7-3 tiebreak win on a Brown double-fault.

Silence was rare throughout the matches, and chants of “Harvard sucks” often accompanied signs bearing warnings like “Chu can’t handle this.”

When asked if the fans were a bit mean-spirited, Nguyen laughingly answered “for sure,” citing a screaming fan who had interrupted Riddell mid-toss during a pivotal point.

But Fish was quick to answer that “that’s the kind of stuff we train for.

“We just said, ‘Hey, we love it that so many people care about this contest that we’re in.’ So in a way, every cheer against us is a cheer for us.”

The screaming, though slightly tempered with the Crimson’s doubles point victory, continued during the singles competition.

The top three matches went first, and Riddell suffered a 7-6, 7-5 loss which knotted the dual match score at 1-1.

But Lingman put the Crimson up again with a 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 win over Brown’s Jamie Cerretani.

“[The fans] would be loud on his serve so I couldn’t really hear [it],” Lingman said. “[It’s] kind of nice on returning to be able to hear his serve, so that made it a little more difficult.”

Chu followed suit with a 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-2 victory over Nick Goldberg.

The Crimson now held a 3-1 advantage, but Chiou suffered a 7-5, 6-4 loss which cut the Crimson lead to 3-2 and allowed the Bears a bit of hope.

Not for long, though.

Playing with the resolve and savvy of a veteran co-captain, Nguyen clinched the dual match with a 6-3, 6-4 victory—nearly six hours after play had begun.

Junior Martin Wetzel was the last off the courts, securing a 6-7, 6-2, 6-4 victory shortly thereafter, and Harvard all but locked up its second straight Ivy title—this after losing in 2002 at Providence to give the Bears the league championship.

And the Brown fans remained boisterous till the bitter end.

“[When] people go to hockey games and they don’t know tennis,” Fish explained, “they’re going to act the same way at a tennis match. In most people’s minds, that’s just good school spirit.

“In a hockey game, you call the goalie a sieve and worse,” he added with a laugh, “and we haven’t seen that level of intensity [at the Harvard courts], really, but is it surprising that that’s the way people would cheer these days? No, it’s not. You have to put your long pants on and be ready.”

The Crimson players did restrain—for the most part—any reaction to the Brown taunting, preferring instead to celebrate good points with screams, fist pumps and recognition of the outnumbered-but-loyal Crimson crowd in attendance.

“[Those are] eally difficult conditions,” Nguyen admitted, “especially with people almost hovering right on your court. I thought that, in a sense, Brown needed all of that to make the match as close as it was.”

And it was close, right down to the wire. The 5-2 score was, according to Fish, “so deceptive, because there was no easy match for us to win out there.”

The final doubles match of Lingman and Riddell appeared all the more important in retrospect. Though the doubles point was only one of the Crimson’s five, it proved the impetus Harvard would need.

“It gave us a lot of momentum,” Nguyen said, “and it stopped their momentum. And it helped at least show to ourselves, and maybe to them, that the crowd can’t intimidate us and help them win.”