M. Tennis Can’t Beat Brown’s Cerratani

The No. 33 Harvard men’s tennis team opened 2003 by hosting its annual Winter Invitational this past weekend.

Had Brown’s Jamie Cerretani not made it to Cambridge, the Crimson’s dominance amongst the nine competing schools—including Ivy League rivals Brown, Princeton and Dartmouth—would have been unchallenged. Unfortunately for Harvard, Cerretani single-handedly knocked four Crimson players out of the A singles flight en route to the title and, along with Chris Drake, beat Harvard pairs in all four of his matches in the doubles draw.

Freshman Brandon Chiu, though, managed to avoid Cerretani, allowing him to capture the B singles flight.

Eight Crimson players, led by top-seeded sophomore Jonathan Chu—the No. 30 player in the nation—entered the 26-man A singles draw and six of them won their opening match before the seventh-seeded Cerretani began methodically eliminating them. The Brown junior beat Harvard co-captain Oli Choo 6-4, 6-4 and then toppled Chu, who was coming off an injury suffered during team fitness training, 6-3, 6-3, in the quarterfinals. Cerretani then registered another upset, defeating third-seeded junior George Turner, 6-3, 6-2, to earn a berth in the finals.

The other semifinal showcased a matchup between Crimson doubles teammates—second-seeded junior co-captain Dave Lingman and his sixth-seeded classmate Mark Riddell.

Riddell ultimately captured a tight first set, 7-6 (8), but Lingman quickly recovered to take the final two sets 6-2, 6-1, and secure the victory.

“They know each other’s games quite well,” freshman Brandon Chiu said. “They know what to expect [from each other], so it just all depends on who has the better day that day.”

But it was Cerretani who had the best weekend. He cemented his dominance by dispatching Lingman, 6-3, 6-2, in the final.

The doubles draw was much the same story, as the fourth-seeded tandem of Cerretani and Drake defeated four consecutive Harvard pairs to capture the title.

The Brown duo took out sophomore Jason Beren and junior Jordan Bohnen in the round of 16 and Turner and junior Chris Chiou in the quarterfinals before stunning the top-seeded Lingman/Riddell partnership, 8-4, in the semifinals. Earlier, Turner and Chiou had upset the fifth-seeded entrant from Rutgers, 8-6.

In the other semifinal, Choo and Chu, the third seeds, upset Brown’s top team, the second seeds, 8-6. Predictably, though, it was Cerretani who emerged triumphant, as he and Drake took the title, 8-3.

Harvard’s lone victory of the weekend came in the B flight singles, where Chiu won, beating Bohnen in the final by walkover due to injury.

Cerretani’s dominance notwithstanding, the Crimson enjoyed success throughout the weekend.

But Harvard isn’t reading too much into its results heading into its dual match season, which begins when the Crimson hosts No. 19 Minnesota, Clemson and Boise State in two weekends.

After all, Harvard was coming off not only an intellectually-draining finals period, but an Ivy League-presidents mandated seven-week layoff from competition.

“We’re not really basing a lot on this tournament alone,” junior Cliff Nguyen said. “But it’s great to see that our guys are still doing well.”

—Staff writer Alan G. Ginsberg can be reached at aginsber@fas.harvard.edu.