Crimson Bests Gophers in Thrilling Comeback

When the No. 21 Harvard men’s tennis team dropped the first sets of all six singles matches on Monday, the Minnesota coach got a bit ahead of himself.

“[The Golden Gophers’] coach was actually seen smiling,” junior Jonathan Chu said, “as if he was confident that they were going to steamroll us in singles.”

The coach of No. 31 Minnesota (3-3, 2-0 Big Ten) might have been wise to postpone his celebration. After watching the Crimson (3-2, 0-0 Ivy) dig deep and manage a 4-3 victory on Monday, the smile was wiped clean off his face.

Harvard coach David Fish downplayed the significance of the grin itself—“I’d smile, too,” he admitted—but remained delighted by his team’s performance.

“I think it was very representative of the kind of character we have on the team this year,” Fish said. “You can’t win matches like that without people who are all interested in working in same direction.

“There was this feeling that our team was just not going to quit,” Fish added. “I think that because they knew that they could each count on each other not to quit, there was no reason not to give everything they had.”

This win, the Crimson’s second Big Ten victory in a row, was a struggle from the get-go. The team was scheduled to catch a late afternoon flight home, but the dual match did not begin until noon.

“Time was kind of against us,” Chu said, “and the crowd was certainly against us.”

At first, the fans assembled in Minneapolis’s Baseline Tennis Center had reason to cheer.

Though the Gophers failed to secure the doubles point with losses in the first- and second-seeded matches, the third and final doubles contest—cut short due Harvard’s clinching of the overall point—was an 8-7 (4) Gopher win which gave Minnesota the momentum.

The scene was similar to that of Saturday’s match against Northwestern in which the Crimson did, indeed, claim the doubles point but lost the final doubles match. The squad then entered singles play on a sluggish note.

“It’s interesting,” Fish said, “because everything’s geared up to try to get that doubles point, and we seem to have some ability to be very competitive in doubles this year…so I think it will take them a little time to understand how to get geared up for the singles again.”

Senior co-captain Cliff Nguyen described the situation as something the team would have to discuss.

“Especially if we end up playing top-ten teams, we definitely don’t want to dig ourselves a hole like this,” Nguyen said.

This year, however, the Harvard team has deep reserves. After co-captain David Lingman dropped his first singles match 6-7 (3), 1-6, Chu took control on the second court and mounted a 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 triumph.

“I knew that the guy I was playing was [Minnesota’s] main source of energy,” Chu said. “When he won the first set of our match, he was really encouraging everybody else, all of his teammates, and the crowd especially. He was being very loud, and I knew that I needed to, in some way, reverse the energy he was giving to the rest of his team.”

Sure enough, with Chu’s win giving Harvard a 2-1 overall edge, the Crimson seemed revitalized. Nguyen took the No. 4 slot 4-6, 6-2, 6-2, and Harvard needed only one more singles match to clinch a team victory.

Of the three matches left on-court, though, only senior George Turner’s No. 6 seemed close to swinging in Harvard’s favor. Though Turner had lost the first seven games of the match, he fought for breaks in the second and third sets and ultimately won 0-6, 7-5, 6-4.

Nguyen deemed the comeback “exhilarating,” while Fish called it an “extreme example of the kind of passion [Turner] plays with.”

But last week, at the USTA/ITA National Team Indoor Championships, Turner was not in the lineup.

“He wasn’t starting,” Fish said, “and he was still the biggest cheerleader. He was still going out for six-mile runs in the morning and he was still totally committed to the team, so that set the bar so high.

“That, to me, set the tone for this past weekend. When he got in, he just let it all go, and [his win] couldn’t have happened if he’d been sulking on the sideline.”

Turner’s victory clinched Harvard’s triumphant comeback, and as the Crimson awaits the forthcoming Harvard Men’s February Open Championships on home turf, the team’s confidence is high.

“To know that your teammates are in it through thick and thin and aren’t going to give up an easy point and will fight with you to the very end,” Chu said, “it’s certainly something that inspires you to work [at] anything to win.”

Anything is right.

“We [were] sort of bent,” Fish said of the past weekend’s wins, “but we didn’t break.”