Word: players
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sophomore Don Pompan, the number one player on the Harvard tennis team, was walking past Leverett House one day last fall--striding purposefully, chattering non-stop to two friends, carrying a couple of organic chemistry books under his arm--when a teammate observing this scene turned and said, "You know, Don treats his whole life like it's reading period...
...just my philosophy that a tennis match is inevitably going to come down to a few points." Pompan said yesterday morning as the team prepared to leave for its biggest match of the year at Princeton. "It's the player that wins those few points who will take the match. Once you recognize that you're one step ahead of the game. A lot of players are under the illusion that they're going to blow a player out, but if it's a good player, he's always going to be in the match...
...puts it," says Chaikovsky, "when he goes on the court he tells himself, 'Hey, there are so many ways I can beat this guy. Whereas somebody else might go out and say 'Hey, this guy's a really good player,' Don says, 'Hey, I can really put this guy away...
Unbridled confidence is the only way, for instance, to explain Pompan's belief that he has any chance today in his confrontation at number one against Princeton's Jay Lapidus, the ball-crushing seventh-ranked player in the country. The two have never played before, but Lapidus has beaten or lost narrowly to every top college player and even given a scare to some top pros...
Still, you never know just how good he could get in the years to come. Jimmy Connors doesn't have to worry--no matter what. Pompan won't get that good, and besides, he wants to be a doctor and not a tennis player...