W. Tennis Slips and Slides at All-Americans

As temperatures slowly fall here in Cambridge, four members of the Harvard women’s tennis team are drowning in the California heat.

Sweating it out in the dense heat of the Riviera/ITA All-American Championships, held in sunny Pacific Palisades, Calif., junior co-captains Courtney Bergman and Susanna Lingman, junior Alexis Martire and sophomore Eva Wang are entering the final days of an eight-day tournament marathon, which began last Saturday, Oct. 4 and runs through Sunday, Oct. 12.

There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that the Crimson quartet will finally be able to cool down over the weekend. The bad news is that they’ll be cooling down instead of playing.

All four Crimson players have been eliminated, in both the singles and doubles draws.

“All-Americans is really tough,” Martire said. “There are the top competitors from across the nation going against each other, and we all got hit with pretty heavy, tough opponents.”

No. 25 Bergman was upset in the opening round of the main draw yesterday by Florida’s No. 59 Jennifer Magley in a match that was typical of Harvard’s week. Bergman lost in three close sets, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.

“Even though [the matches] were really close, they were against people we should be beating,” Wang said. “[A lot of us] haven’t played a real match since last year, and the lack of competition is getting to us. We need more experience and practice behind us.”

No. 73 Lingman provided one of the lone Harvard highlights as she bested Minnesota’s No. 52 Angela Buergis in the first round, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4 in an epic two hour and 45 minute contest. The victory was particularly meaningful because Buergis had knocked Lingman out of last year’s tournament.

But the match took its course on Lingman, as she dropped her next round match to Clemson’s No. 88 Daniela Alvarez, 6-1, 6-4.

Martire faced similar hard luck, falling to Stanford’s No. 80 Story Tweedie-Yates 6-2, 7-5 in the opening round before losing a back draw match to Denver’s Suzana Maskovic in three sets—7-6, 2-6, 6-4.

“I thought I played well [overall] even though I just wasn’t hitting the ball too well,” Martire said. “You have to give her credit here, though, for being the better player.”

Wang, in her own grueling battle, extended Arizona’s No. 29 Dianna Hollands to three sets before giving way, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4. She lost another heartbreaker in the back draw, again in three sets, to Nebraska’s Gitte Ostermann, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4.

In doubles, Harvard’s lone entry, the No. 25 Bergman-Lingman duo was up-ended by Duke’s team of Amanda Johnson and Tori Zawaki 8-4, ranked ninth in the country.

It was the pair’s second disappointing loss in as many weeks. Last week, Bergman and Lingman were the top seeds at the Cissie Leary Invitational at the University of Pennslyvania but fell to a Minnesota tandem in the semi-finals.

Lingman’s off-season surgery surely has played a role in the duo’s early struggles.

She had cysts removed over the summer and was not able to practice with Bergman or by herself before the season.

The team now looks ahead to the beginning of the Ivy League season, hoping to improve with every match.

“With time, we’ll get our strategies back in order,” Wang said. “We’ll get our game faces. We’ll get that mind set we need.”