Hugh ’09 a double champion

Junior Adam Hugh led Princeton to the finals of the team competition, in which the Tigers fell to Texas Wesleyan for the third consecutive year. Hugh won the men’s doubles title with Tahl Leibovitz of CUNY-Queens and won the mixed doubles title with his sister, Judy, of Rutgers.

The No. 2-seed Tigers cruised to the co-ed team finals with 3-0 victories over Illinois and newcomer Universidad de Puerto Rico, which boasts a heavily talented roster. Tiger sophomore Eric Finkelstein had a particularly difficult match against defensive specialist Walter Alomar, who alternates between anti-spin rubber and conventional sandwich rubber and played a fabulous match.

“Loops that are winners against anyone else just came back,” Finkelstein said in a statement.

In the finals, the Tigers faced off against powerhouse Texas Wesleyan and, as they did last year, fell 3-1. Hugh ground out a hard-fought victory over Jasna Reed, the top seed in the women’s bracket. Reed took game two from Hugh and pushed him to 11-9 victories in games one, three and four.

In the second match, Princeton senior Pan Lin went head to head with the Rams’ Ludovic Gombos. Gombos’ inside-out forehand loops were too much for Lin, and Texas Wesleyan quickly squared the team score at one.

Finkelstein then fell to Carlos Chiu, and the Rams took a 2-1 lead heading into the fourth match. With all sorts of pressure on his back, Princeton freshman Alden Fan had to defeat Dinko Kranjac to force doubles. After tightly contested losses in the first two games, Fan broke through in game three. But Kranjac took game four, and the Rams were victorious without having to play doubles.

“Our strategy was to hope we could take two singles matches, then win by doubles,” Hugh said. “We did not anticipate them playing [Reed] in the first match, and we were taken by surprise. They beat us.”

In the men’s doubles bracket, No. 1-seed Hugh and Leibovitz lived up to their billing. Despite never having played together, the pair cruised to the finals to meet the menacing pairing of Gombos and Chiu. The match was exciting, as it came down to the fifth game. But Hugh and Leibovitz proved their mettle, exhausting the Rams’ tandem and running away with the fifth game, 11-3.

“We started a little shaky in the first match, then played pretty well in the second,” Hugh said. “Then we put it all together for the finals. [Leibovitz] is a very touch player and is good at keeping the ball in play. Our styles mesh well.”

In the mixed doubles bracket, Hugh and his sister Judy eased to the finals as the No. 2 seed. There, the Hughs faced off against Leibovitz and his partner, Barbara Wei of Penn. Hugh had no trouble overcoming his men’s doubles partner, as the Hughs cruised to the national title.

“I played with my sister many times growing up,” Hugh said. “The chemistry is good, and it’s a lot easier to play with her than anyone else.”

In the men’s singles bracket, top-seeded Hugh fell to No. 3 seed Alfred Najem of Emporia in the semifinals. Najem defeated Leibovitz in the finals to take the singles title.

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“I was definitely disappointed in myself,” Hugh said. “I didn’t play very well, but he also did play quite well. I didn’t get to warm up before the match because I was watching my sister in the women’s semifinals.”

Though the result was the same as the last three years, Hugh and the rest of the club will work hard in the next year to take down the Rams.