It certainly wasn’t your grandmother’s country club tennis match. Unless your grandmother tailgates. And carries around a cardboard cutout of her favorite player’s head mounted on a shorn hockey stick.

No, the standing-room-only crowd which packed Brown’s Pizzitola Sports Center to watch No. 22 Harvard defeat the No. 50 Bears 5-2 was raucous—and, at times, unkind. But it did shape what Crimson co-captain Cliff Nguyen declared “the most exciting match of my career.”

From the very introduction of the Brown players—done WWE-style with a booming loudspeaker and overhead lights which flashed as each player was introduced—this match was different. The four Pizzitola courts, located on the fourth floor of the athletic complex, literally shook with the energy of the hundreds of fans crowded between the courts.

And then there was the fact that this dual match would, for all practical purposes, crown the 2004 Ivy champion. The Crimson (15-6, 5-0 Ivy) and Brown (16-5, 4-1) sat tied atop the Ivy standings before the match, and though both still had to face Yale and Dartmouth before the season ended, neither competitor was expected to pose any threat.

So Friday’s winner would, almost certainly, be the only squad undefeated in Ivy play—and with the title would come an automatic NCAA tournament berth.

The Brown fans seemed well aware of the match’s significance.

“You’re so lucky to be able to play in an event like that,” said Harvard coach David Fish ’72. “I know it was chaos, and it felt somewhat like a free-for-all, but...what a thrill for our guys to be able to play in something like that.”

And from the very beginning, the dual match was thrilling.

Junior Jonathan Chu and sophomore Brandon Chiu began the doubles competition with an 8-5 win, the final shot a net-cord volley. The Bears evened things up quickly, though, felling senior Chris Chiou and Nguyen. The Crimson duo had held a perfect 7-0 record before the 8-2 loss.

And so the doubles point fell on the shoulders of senior Mark Riddell and co-captain David Lingman. Though down 7-5, the Crimson pair mounted a gutsy comeback and pushed the decisive match to a tiebreak.

“Mark and I have played a lot of doubles before,” Lingman explained, “and we’ve had a lot of close matches. I think last year, we won three matches in a row when we were down match point, so when we were down a break [on Friday], we knew that we had been close in the set.

“With everybody coming and watching, I think it just focused us in.”

That experience proved vital, as the two secured a quick 7-3 tiebreak win on a Brown double-fault.

Silence was rare throughout the matches, and chants of “Harvard sucks” often accompanied signs bearing warnings like “Chu can’t handle this.”

When asked if the fans were a bit mean-spirited, Nguyen laughingly answered “for sure,” citing a screaming fan who had interrupted Riddell mid-toss during a pivotal point.