M. Tennis Watches Ivy Title Hopes Disappear in Loss to Brown

With yesterday’s 5-2 loss to Brown, the No. 43 Harvard men’s tennis team officially removed itself from the running for the Ivy League title.

Despite a 6-1 win over Yale on Friday, the Crimson—which has won the Ancient Eight crown with 7-0 showings in each of the last two years—now has two blemishes on its league record: an April 9 loss to Columbia, and yesterday’s loss the Bears. With just one Ivy match remaining, Harvard (12-11, 4-2 Ivy) cannot catch Brown, which remains undefeated in the Ivies.

BROWN 5, HARVARD 2

The Crimson’s Murr Center was standing room only by the end of yesterday’s match, and in front of an unconventionally loud tennis crowd, the Bears (22-5, 6-0) took the second and third doubles matches 8-4 and 8-3, respectively.

“[Brown] typically comes out pretty hot in doubles,” said junior Brandon Chiu, who played the last contest with co-captain Jason Beren. “We warmed up well, and we did what we had to do, but they [did] more in doubles.

“Today, they were playing better,” Chiu added. “Especially at the two and three spots, both their teams just played better matches.”

Co-captain Jonathan Chu was first to complete his singles match, losing 6-3, 6-3 and giving Brown a 2-0 edge. But freshman Ashwin Kumar and sophomore Shantanu Dhaka both won in straight sets to knot the dual-match score at two.

Chiu dropped his match 6-3, 4-6, 6-0 to give the Bears a 3-2 advantage, however, and sophomore Gideon Valkin would soon lose 7-6 (4), 6-4 to seal Brown’s victory.

Freshman Dan Nguyen was the last to finish, a 7-6 (2), 6-2 loss in hand, but as the players milled about to watch the tail end of Nguyen’s match, any hopes of a third consecutive Ivy title had already been crushed.

“This is probably the toughest loss, especially since we were all prepared,” Chiu said. “We knew what was coming at us—we just didn’t have the goods.”

HARVARD 6, YALE 1

The Crimson did its part Friday in New Haven, sweeping the Bulldogs (5-13, 1-4) in doubles and losing only one singles match.

“The Harvard-Yale match is always a good one,” said coach Dave Fish ’72, “but we played pretty well coming out of the blocks yesterday.”

Fish’s mission to find suitable doubles combinations had become all the more pressing with the team’s mid-season struggles. Though last week’s pairings proved effective, winning five of six matches, the coach jumbled his lineup again Friday, moving Kumar up to play the top match with Chu, bumping Valkin and sophomore Scott Denenberg up to the second slot, and pairing Chiu with Beren.

“We’re starting to have a couple of different lineups that work,” Fish said. “Sometimes you use one lineup, and sometimes you use another.

“We’ve been able to win a doubles point with a couple different lineups [recently],” he added, “and that helps.”

And with the doubles point secured—on 8-5, 9-7, and 8-6 wins, in descending order—Harvard dropped Yale with five singles wins, three of which came in straight sets.

The two Crimson players to go to three—Kumar and Nguyen—both lost their second sets, but Kumar rallied for a 6-4 victory in the third, and Nguyen a 6-3 win.

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