The Bruins’ doubles teams showed improvement at this year’s Pacific Coast Men’s Doubles Championship.
No. 4 UCLA men’s tennis (13-2) fell just short in the finals of the main draw, but won the consolation championship this weekend in La Jolla, California. UCLA had reached the semifinals of the tournament last year.
The fifth-seeded pair of senior Austin Rapp and freshman Keegan Smith made a run to the finals, but fell to Jack Jaede and Laurens Verboven of USC.
“I just think (USC) was the hungrier of the two teams today.” said coach Billy Martin.
Rapp and Smith have an 1-2 record against Jaede and Verboven. The duo defeated the Trojan pair 6-0 in UCLA’s victory over USC last week.
“They played better than they did when we played them last week,” Rapp said. “We broke them three times last week in one set. We weren’t able to break them at all (this week) – it just came down to two bad service games on our part.”
Despite the loss, both Rapp and Smith remained positive about their overall performance in the tournament.
“I was just excited to play in front of my home crowd in San Diego.” Smith said.
Besides Rapp and Smith, another UCLA pair was able to pull out the consolation championship despite early adversity.
Ninth-seeded junior Maxime Cressy and freshman Bryce Pereira fell in their first match of the tournament in the round of 64. But the duo rebounded, going on a six-match hot streak to clinch the finals.
“They kept their heads (in it) and played well the rest of the back draw,” Martin said. “They’re still a relatively new team so I think it was really beneficial for them to get a lot of matches in.”
Other Bruin pairs in the tournament competed against each other, as fifth-seeded sophomore Ben Goldberg and sophomore Evan Zhu defeated freshman Connor Hance and redshirt freshman Connor Rapp in the round of 32. Goldberg and Zhu later fell in the round of 16 in two sets.
This tournament gave UCLA ample doubles practice in a low-stakes environment, as it didn’t count toward the season dual-match record.
The Bruins will refocus on the season at hand as they start conference play against Oregon on Friday.