Columbia Hands M. Tennis First Ivy League Defeat Since 2002

Co-captain Jonathan Chu remembers the feeling, if only barely.

But he is the only one, the only player on the No. 39 Harvard men’s tennis team who had experienced, on court, the sting of an Ivy League loss before Saturday’s 5-2 defeat at the hands of Columbia. The disappointment followed Friday’s 5-2 victory over Cornell.

The last time the Crimson (9-10, 1-1 Ivy) lost in league play? April 21, 2002—a 4-3 loss to Brown. Chu, the only freshman in the lineup that day, played his team’s top singles and doubles matches.

But Chu knows, after watching his squad go 20-1 in the Ivies his first three years, that “for all the other Ivy teams playing us, it could make their seasons if they beat Harvard.”

And the Crimson was certainly vulnerable after an 0-for-4 spring break trip through California.

With its doubles combinations not yet fixed and its best singles players nagged by injury—Chu with a torn abdominal muscle and senior Martin Wetzel with a shoulder injury—Harvard struggled at the Beren Tennis Center, dropping the doubles point both days and overcoming this initial deficit just once.

COLUMBIA 5, HARVARD 2

Though the duo of Chu and freshman Dan Nguyen was first to fall to the No. 72 Lions (13-2, 3-0), dropping the top doubles match by an 8-2 count, the next two doubles contests were tight, give-and-take affairs.

Freshman Ashwin Kumar and sophomore Shantanu Dhaka took a 4-1 lead in the middle match, only to see the score knotted at five apiece. Meanwhile, on the third court, junior Brandon Chiu and co-captain Jason Beren surmounted a 5-2 deficit to bring their contest to six apiece.

Win both matches, and Harvard would take the doubles point and an early, 1-0 lead—lose but one of the contests, though, and Columbia would grab the edge.

And when Kumar ripped a cross-court shot wide to end his match at 8-6, it was the Lions who jumped out in front.

“Being down 1-0 is very different,” said Chu, adding, “we’re used to just rolling guys in doubles.”

All three doubles pairings had been switched from the previous day, and, said Chiu, “I guess we’re struggling just finding good combinations. We tried all three new combinations, and the energy just wasn’t there.”

Sophomore Gideon Valkin leveled the match with a quick 6-1, 6-4 victory in the sixth singles slot, and Chu gave the Crimson the lead with his 6-4, 7-6 win—but Chiu dropped a heated three-set contest, and Dhaka would soon follow suit.

And so, with the Lions in possession of a 3-2 edge, all attention fell on Courts 2 and 3, on which a pair of Harvard rookies were playing just their second-ever Ivy matches.

Both wore into their third sets with palpable tension, but Kumar ultimately fell 7-6, 1-6, 3-6, giving the Lions the fourth point and the dual-match win.

Nguyen ended the day with an exhausting 5-7, 6-4, 4-6 defeat.

HARVARD 5, CORNELL 2

“We came out a little flat,” sophomore Scott Denenberg said of his squad’s doubles efforts Friday against the Big Red (9-8, 1-2).

He and Dhaka had dropped the third match 9-7, and though Chu and Kumar battled back from a 6-3 deficit to win in the top match in a tiebreak, Chiu and Nguyen fell 8-6.

“We dropped the point,” Chu said, “but we just came out preparing for a fight in singles.”

Harvard took the top five individual contests—three in three-setters—en route to a 5-2 victory to open its Ivy season and overcome, at least for a day, its shaky doubles performances.

Noteworthy were the showings of Kumar and Nguyen, who each notched the first Ivy victories of their young collegiate careers—though the next day’s competition would not prove so friendly.

“It’s a different team,” Chiu said, “so you can’t really hope that streak continues with a new team.”

While last year’s singles roster could potentially feature five now-graduated seniors, Harvard’s top half now boasts two rookies. And Chu, the only mainstay from last year’s singles lineup, still battles the abdominal injury that sidelined him, for the most part, over spring break.

It might not have been the best way to open the Ivy season, but should the Crimson win its last five league matches, the team could still be in the running for the Ivy title—and, more importantly, the NCAA berth that accompanies it.

And so, when asked about his injury, Chu only laughed.

“I can’t not play right now,” he said simply.

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.