Make way for the 'Chu-Chu' train

[img1]When Washington head coach Matt Anger successfully recruited David Chu to Washington to join his older brother, Daniel, on the men's tennis team, Anger's six-year-old son, Ben, was quick to give his dad's new brother-tandem a catchy nickname.

"They are the Chu-Chu train!" Ben explained to his father.

The older Anger had to laugh at that one. Then again, Daniel and David have given their coach plenty of reasons to smile and laugh ever since the train arrived at the Lloyd Nordstrom Tennis Center station.

Anger was quick to state how both have helped the team this season with their different styles of play.

"They are very different people and players," Anger said. "Daniel (a junior) is the lefty, has the bigger serve and attacks more. David (a freshman) is the righty -- the counter-puncher."

Anger said that Daniel has refined his game during his two-plus seasons as a Husky by learning different methods to get into the net and take advantage of his exceptional volleying skills.

"He's finding different ways to set up points," Anger said.

Added Daniel: "I'm adaptable. If I need to play differently [to win] I will."

Anger expects that as David gains more match experience he will build up his ability to play an all-court game to complement his already stellar baseline game.

"Over time he'll improve his ability to finish off points," Anger said.

As one of the very best junior tennis stars in Canada, Daniel had plenty of American universities interested in him. Including the UW, other schools on his list were Princeton, Georgia Tech, Northwestern and Notre Dame. In the end Washington won out because it had quality academics as well as a quality tennis program.

It didn't hurt the UW's cause that Seattle was only a quick drive across the border and down I-5 from his native Vancouver, British Columbia.

"I liked Seattle better than those other cities [that the other colleges were in]," Daniel said.

David knew he wanted to join his brother when the time came for him to make a decision about where to play college tennis.

"Pretty much this one," said David, when people asked him what his choices were.

[img2]Daniel and David's parents, Keith and Athena Chu, definitely enjoy their sons' decisions to stay in the Pacific Northwest. The two can't make it to every home match, but they do make it to at least half of them.

"We come down when we can," said Keith, watching David playing singles a few weeks ago. "I can double my tennis-watching pleasure having two sons playing on the team."

Chu is pleased to see his sons playing for a program whose coaches take a great amount of pride in pushing their players to want to achieve the highest possible levels of success both on and off the court.

True to Chu's words, Anger made sure his guys knew where their focus should be going into finals week this past quarter.

"We have four days off, which means we will do great on our final exams," Anger told the team following the Gonzaga victory. "Use your time to study."

"They are all well-rounded students and that's good to see," Chu added.

The team (13-3 and No. 26 in the country) is pretty good at tennis, too.

"The UW team is so strong," Chu said. "You can see they are having fun out there."

Daniel and David have been doing just that since each one's arrival. They've each won more than they've lost, in addition to each winning his first-ever college match in doubles and singles.

As a freshman in 2004, Daniel teamed up with Nick Weiss to defeat Santa Clara 8-6 at No. 2 doubles. With the UW already leading 6-0 and having long since wrapped up the match, Daniel was locked into a dog fight with Santa Clara's Taylor Bedilion.

Daniel won the first set 7-6 (7-5), but Bedilion would not go down easily. "Seriously!" Bedilion bellowed following every big point. Daniel was not impressed, nor intimidated by Bedilion's punk act. "Chuey" won the second set 7-6 (10-8), capping his victory and the team's sweep of the Broncos with a classic arm pump that would in time land him the nickname "The Fist."

But the biggest win of Daniel's college career came during this season's opening-round win over then-No. 6 Virginia -- the team that eliminated the UW from the NCAA Tournament last season -- in the opening round of the USTA/ITA National Indoor tournament.

Daniel clinched the win in three sets at No. 5 singles over Virginia's Marko Miklo. In the process he whipped the home crowd into a wild frenzy. Behind the Nordstrom Tennis Center desk is a framed photo of The Fist celebrating the moment.

Junior Alex Slovic, Daniel's doubles partner and co-captain, has shared plenty of similarly exciting moments on the court with his teammate. He credits their friendship off the court for their success on it.

"I think if you're friends with somebody off the court, you tend to work better with them on the court," said Slovic. "It helps us."

Their teamwork helped the UW beat Stanford for only the third time ever in dual match play last season. During that match Daniel and Slovic crushed Stanford's K.C. Corkery and Sam Warburg 8-1 at No. 1. They would lose to Corkery and Warburg in the Pac-10 doubles title match and would also be eliminated from the NCAA Tournament in the second round by the Stanford duo.

"That's definitely one of our goals (a Pac-10 doubles crown) this year," Daniel said.

This season, in the dual-match opener for the UW, David won his first-ever collegiate match 6-0, 6-1 at No. 6 singles against Idaho's Kyle McKenzie, also in a 7-0 UW rout. With the experience and depth of the Washington roster David has yet to become a regular in the starting lineup against tougher opponents, but he has proven that he can compete and win playing at this high level.

Against Gonzaga he added a doubles win to his season totals, teaming up with junior Mike Ricks at No. 3 to win 8-3. He bounced back from his lone loss of the season in singles to Memphis as he beat Gonzaga's Charles Adams 6-2, 6-3 in what he would later say was his best effort of the year. He is now 3-1 in singles and well on his way to becoming the player that Anger recruited him to be.

Living together in Nordheim Court, the brothers have been reunited after two years of living apart. They now get the chance to hang out all the time. They talk tennis and play video games, chess and piano -- which both have played since they were three years old.

"He loves it," Keith Chu said about David's adjustments to college life. "He's growing socially and academically."

Teammate and fellow freshman Patrik Fischer can attest to David's abilities in the classroom. The two took Economics 201 and studied together often.

"He's very professional," said Fischer. "He studies hard."

Slovic jokingly nicknamed David "Crazy."

"Simply because he is not," said Anger. "He is the anti-crazy."

Both Daniel and David have career aspirations that include professional tennis and some kind of career in business when their days at the UW are over. Daniel, a 10-time Junior National Canadian champion, is aiming to qualify to represent Canada in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics in tennis.

But those future plans can wait. The Chu-Chu train still has a few more stops to make.

Reach Daily reporter Jeff Brown at jeffbrown@thedaily.washington.edu