Doubles Double

Coming from a cold-climate country such as England, tennis twins Richard and William Barker found the Houston weather to be their cup of tea. In fact, the heat was one of the main reasons they chose to attend Rice University.

“I love the hot weather,” says Richard. “In England, you play indoors nine months of the year. In Houston, you play outdoors all 12 months.”
But playing in steamy conditions did take some getting used to. “My first week in Houston was the hottest in the history of the city, I think. It was like 150 degrees,” explains Richard. “After being so tired from all that practice, I quickly became acclimated to the weather.”

Like the weather, the dynamic duo has been hot on the tennis court. After winning the Omni Hotels National Intercollegiate Indoor Championship in November—the first such title in the school’s history—they started the season in January ranked number one in the country in doubles. The two juniors had not lost between October and March, winning 24 matches in a row.

In singles, Richard is ranked 24th in the country, and last season, he was selected to the all-Western Athletic Conference first team for singles and the second team for doubles. He also was named the Region VI rookie of the year by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. As a freshman, he won the Sammy Giammalva Award, given annually by Rice to the player who most contributed to the team. William won the honor last year.

William is ranked 35th in singles. Last year, he was named first-team all-Western Athletic Conference and was twice selected as player of the week. In academics, William also is scoring high marks. The economics and managerial studies major has a 3.8 grade point average and was chosen for the Scholar-Athlete Award.

“They are excellent athletes and honor students, which is a good mix for Rice,” says tennis coach Ron Smarr.

Smarr points out that the twins are the best defensive doubles team in the country. “They make the other team play a lot of ball,” he says, adding that they are mentally tough and like to compete to the end. In one match against highly ranked Stanford University, the twins were down 6–3 and came back to win 9–7.

“We are both very clever players,” says Richard. “A lot of players go out there and try to hit the ball as hard as they can without thinking. But tennis is a thinking sport. And mentally we are both very strong. Some people get nervous when they are down in a match. We see it as an opportunity to pull an upset. We love challenges.”

Like a well-choreographed dance team, the twins have developed a natural flow of court movement after years of playing and practicing together. Both are left-handed and have good reflexes, and each knows exactly where his partner is on any given play.

They started playing tennis a few years after they were born in Solihull in central England. Their parents, avid players of squash and tennis, gave them rackets at the age of five and provided them with half-hour tennis lessons once a week. By the time they were 12, the twins had become England’s national champions for their age group. But being the best at such a young age took its toll on the Barkers. They had to travel almost every weekend throughout England and Europe, forcing them to miss school and forgo friends.

“My parents weren’t happy that I was sacrificing my education,” says Richard. “I wasn’t happy about the fact that I wasn’t hanging out with my friends. If you put everything into tennis at that young age, you wind up without an education at 17.”

For the next five years, the twins gave up tennis and gained a more balanced life. They kept up with athletics, however, playing field hockey, soccer, and golf. While in high school at the King Edward’s School in Birmingham, they once again took up tennis. Though they had to work on their technique, they were amazed at how easily the game came back to them.

“When we started again, we were fresh,” says William. “I don’t completely regret not playing for all those years, but it would have been nice to see where we would be had we continued.” He adds that many of the opponents that he beat during his early years are now competing in Wimbledon.

After high school, the twins played professionally for a year while they honed their skills in preparation for college tennis. Rice assistant tennis coach Shaheen Ladhani, who is from England, recruited them. By pure chance, William and his brother had to play each other on the day Ladhani was scouting them. “We fixed the game so we could both look good,” William says.

When the Barkers arrived at Rice, they joined a team that, except for two Americans, is composed largely of foreign students: three Brits, two Germans, one Japanese, one Guatemalan, and one Yugoslavian. The twins say they quickly felt at home, especially in a city as diverse and large as Houston. “What I really like about Houston is the free refills,” says Richard. “In England, you have pay for them.”

The affable twins speak in rapid-fire sentences and enjoy exchanging repartees. When asked who is better of the two, Richard responds, “That’s by far the easiest question you’ve asked. Without a doubt, I am. Whenever I play him, I let him have a couple of games so he won’t be embarrassed.”

William counters that he has beaten his brother two out of three times in tournament play, and that the eight matches he has lost to Richard have been fixed.

All joking aside, the twins are dead serious about winning the NCAA doubles championship this May in Athens, Georgia. “The easy part is getting to be number one,” says William. “The hardest part is remaining there.”

So, while everyone is gunning for the number-one ranked team in the nation, the pressure is slowly building for the twins. But they don’t seem too worried—after all, they thrive when the heat is on.

—David D. Medina