M. Tennis Foes Can Choose Their Poison

Add another Chiu to the train.

The Harvard men’s tennis team features four—count ’em, four—players with homonyms for monikers, now that freshman Brandon Chiu has joined the fold with co-captain Oli Choo, sophomore Jonathan Chu and junior Chris Chiou.

Chiu is one of three freshmen on the team, along with junior Jordan Bohnen, a transfer from the University of Toronto. Fresh blood is always welcome, even with an extraordinarily deep team that boasts 14 returning players.

“We’ll be stronger this year because the freshmen and Jordan bring energy to the team,” Choo said. “Even though we lost our captains [Dali Snydor ’02 and William Lee ’02], everyone on the team last year has improved over the summer.”

The Crimson, ranked No. 35 nationally at season’s end, hopes to improve upon its 15-6 record and crack into the top 30. With the first tourney, the Notre Dame Invitational, still over a week away, the team has yet to determine the singles lineup and doubles pairings.

“We’re going to experiment with the lineup a lot those two weekends, and it will probably all fall into place,” Choo said. “Our team is really deep, so our top eight or nine can all beat each other on a given day.”

Chu, the reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Year and unanimous All-Ivy selection, will likely play at the top of the singles lineup again this year. He was chosen last Tuesday to compete in the ITA Men’s All American Championships in both the singles draw and the doubles competition (with Choo). The ITAs are the largest collegiate tournament of the season and mark the beginning of Division I events across the nation.

Captaining the team with Choo is senior David Lingman, another All-Ivy first teamer, who played in the top three slots along with junior Cliff Nguyen.

Lingman and Chu are both ranked nationally as singles players at No. 128 and No. 78, respectively, while the Chu-Choo combo is 24th in doubles.

“[Choo, Lingman, and Chu] are people we expect to start things off strongly for us,” said assistant coach Peter Mandeau. “One goal for certain is to recapture the Ivy and ECAC championships.

“More so than that, we hope to take advantage of the talent and experience we have on the squad to really make a mark at a high national level for the program.”

The first major event of the season, the ECACs, has been disappointing for Harvard with losses to Yale and Princeton in the semis the past two years. But with the location moving from Cambridge to Flushing Meadows, NY, this year, perhaps some of Pete Sampras’s magic can rub off on the Crimson.

“We have a really good chance,” Choo said. “We’re stronger than the other teams out there. When everyone on our team is playing well, we are one of the top teams in the country.”

—Staff writer Brenda E. Lee may be reached at belee@fas.harvard.edu.