Big Fish in a Big Pond

Dave Fish doesn't drink, smoke, chase women, or hit a lousy backhand. On top of that, he has a good sense of humor, is modest about his tennis and squash accomplishments, has boyish good looks, and likes apple pie.

Well, the bit about the pie may or may not be true, but the point is that Harvard's 26-year-old, new tennis and squash coach is damn near perfect.

Fish will need all the perfection he can get to fill the shoes of Jack Barnaby, the coaching legend who retired last year with a long list of national squash championships and Ivy tennis titles to his credit.

To make the picture a little clearer, Fish's mortality was confirmed over the last two weeks as his squash team lost for the first time at Princeton and his tennis squad dropped several matches in a national tournament in Wisconsin.

"I found that taking over after Jack Barnaby, virtually every letter I got said something like, 'Good luck in filling the biggest shoes around,'" Fish said yesterday, adding with a twinkle in his eye, "So I replied that I have only one place to go, and that's down."

"And sure enough...," Fish continued with a chuckle, not finishing the self-deprecating quip.

In fact, though, Dave has been going anywhere but down. Although he may lack the technical genius of Barnaby--who wrote the book, literally, on how to play tennis--Fish has a lot of new ideas about the game and he is beginning to implement them.

"He's trying to add to what Jack did," sophomore tennis player Andy Chaikovsky said yesterday. "Jack was very strong in technique, but Dave's trying to add on the conditioning and mental aspects."

A psychology major in his student days at Harvard in the early '70s, Fish feels that "a great many losses are caused in college athletics by people who are looking for the wrong thing. They're working for the wrong objective, like trying too hard and wanting to win too badly."

"I feel that you can go into it a little deeper," the jeans-and-sweater clad coach continued, "and give a person a way to deal with the ego involvement that hurts his performance."

Working with a grant from the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, Fish is drawing partly from the Asian martial arts to construct a new kind of athletic program dealing with things like muscle awareness and concentration.

In the meantime, Fish is applying some of his theories to his players, and he has at least one athlete doing yoga exercises.

"I really believe that a lot of these things I'm working on are actually things that Jack did intuitively over the years," Fish said. "I'm just trying to articulate them a little bit more."

Of course, the teams are not about to let their new coach get away with his innovations without a little ribbing.

"The standard joke," says Fish, "is that whenever I introduce a new shot the guys kid me about being 'the guru.'"

Unsparing Ribs

"Yeah," says tennis captain Dan Waldman, "he's a closet philosopher who's concerned with inner tennis and all that stuff, which I think is off the wall."

Despite the ribbing, Fish's players are devoted to him. Their words make him sound almost too good to be true.

Squash captain Bill Kaplan, who played three years under Barnaby: "He's very similar to Jack in his teaching techniques and he relates extremely well to all the members of the team."

Sophomore squash star John Havens: "I think he's filled Jack Barnaby's shoes very well. As far as just being a squash coach he's very concerned about everybody on the team. He sees squash as more than a game, as a way to help people grow up."

Sophomore tennis player Kevin Shaw, who "guru" Fish has working on a new two-handed forehand: "Dave is a great coach, even in comparison to Jack. I don't want this to sound mushy, but he is a great coach."

Not bad for a guy who has been around only for a couple of years as an assistant coach. When, you may ask, did Fish's meteoric rise begin?

The story goes back to his teenage days, when he was top ranked in the New England juniors. "I wasn't any great shakes," he says. "I just happened to be ranked number one." Hmmmm...

At the same time, he also was awarded the New England juniors' Good Sportsman Award--the mention of which today makes him throw back his head and roll his eyes.

"They found some guy who should have done well in the championships and gave him the sportsmanship award," says Fish, adding, "I guess I didn't yell when I lost, so they gave it to me." Hmmm again...

At Exeter, Fish starred in tennis and squash, and from there came to Cambridge. "I really didn't think much about my college choice," he says, "But I was lucky enough to get an A-rating (a "likely" in the old days) and I came here." Hmmm III....

At Harvard, Fish went from number four on the freshman team to number two on the varsity his sophomore year. "Jack was just such a good coach that it shows you what can be done in a year," Fish continued. HMMM... (The thing is, this guy is for real, and he actually means what he says.)

Ill Fate

The Fates finally caught up with Dave in his junior year, when he fell victim to a vicious case of tennis elbow. "It was so acute," says Dave, "That I couldn't even get out of a chair without pain."

But the injury got the psychology majorthinking about his new approaches to the game, and it got him to look at his sports from Barnaby's viewpoint on the bench.

After a couple of years out West--where he picked up his teetotaling habits from a Mormon family after, he confesses, having spent a night or two during his undergraduate days awash in the suds--he returned to Harvard to take two years of medical courses. Then, Fish spent two years as assistant coach, after which he was ready to step into Barnaby's very big shoes.

And he is happy to have the challenge. "The exciting thing about being at Harvard is that I don't think anybody works harder at their tasks than the young men who get here," he says.

"A standard joke is that good tennis players should be dumb in order to put up with having to hit ball after ball over long periods of time," Fish continues. "That's not true--it's just that the smart tennis player has to learn how to control himself."

And that's what Dave Fish's tennis program is all about--learning how to control.

As for Fish himself, well, it's pretty obvious that he's in control.

But the stuff about his being perfect is simply not true. No way. Rumor has it around Hemenway Gym that he can't hit a drop shot and chew bubble gum at the same time.