Championship teams, it is said, are those which come through in the clutch, which win the belly games, which remain cool and perform their appointed duties in the toughest of circumstances. And while it may not yet be the time to start talking championship for the 1978 Harvard tennis team, the Crimson netmen demonstrated that they are a pretty classy bunch by gutting out a 6-3 victory in an exceedingly close match on Columbia's home courts yesterday afternoon.

The visitors did it by winning four of the six singles matches--two after being down match point--and cruising home with a pair of victories in the doubles competition. All in all, an incredible total of eight sets came down to tiebreakers, and the men in red--voila--stole six of them.

Believe It

"It was an unbelievable match," ecstatic coach Dave Fish said afterwards, and you can underscore unbelievable. You see, the Lions (now 4-2 in league play) are virtually unbeatable on their home surface, clay, while Harvard (2-0) favors very fast surfaces. And then there were the matches, classic cardiac-arrest affairs.

Freshman Don Pompan, playing at two in his first league match ever, turned in the most amazing performance of the day as he defeated Lion David Cooper by a gnat's eyelash--that translates to 3-6, 7-6 with a 5-4 tiebreaker (ulp), and 7-5. Pompan broke Cooper's service twice to win the last four games of the match, after fighting off two match points in the second set and charging back from 3-0 and 4-1 deficits in the third.

Next patient, please. Five-player Kevin Shaw followed Pompan into the cardiac ward by out-clutching Adil Toubia of the Sudan, 3-6, 7-6 (if you guessed a 5-4 tiebreaker, you're right), and 6-4.

Andy Chaikovsky (number four) and Greg Kirsch (at six) took it easy on the crowd by winning their 'azor-thin matches in just two sets each, with Chai zapping Jeff Papell 6-and-4 and Kirsch--a rare Harvard clay-court specialist--taking Andy Caufield in successive tiebreakers.

Captain Todd Lundy, nursing a pulled muscle in his side and hitting nothing close to his best serve, forced the Lions' sophomore sensation. Eric Fromm, to a second-set tiebreaker before succumbing. Scott Walker also lost, blowing a lead when Aussie Greg Dingwall came alive while trailing 4-1 in the second set and ran off nine straight games to win the match in three sets.

Walker redeemed himself playing alongside Kevin Shaw at second doubles, when he put away three consecutive overheads to win the tiebreaker (5-2), the second set (7-6), the individual match (6-3, 7-6), and the team match. Harvard (phew) had passed its first serious test of the '78 campaign in first-rate fashion.

Kirsch and Pompan mopped up with a three-set win at third doubles, while Lundy and Chaikovsky lost a heartbreaker at one when they dropped four straight match points to lost a 5-4 tiebreaker in the third set--but by that point, no one cared a whole lot.

After the match, Fish--who celebrated a birthday yesterday--revealed that he had rented several hours of time on some clay courts in Boston earlier this week to prepare for the Columbia showdown.

"I'll tell you," the birthday boy said after the match, "it was worth every penny of it."

And for the Harvard racquetmen, who have suddenly proved they are a money team, that remark seems very appropriate.