LA JOLLA, Calif. – No. 39 Austin Rapp and Keegan Smith of UCLA reached the final round of the 129th Annual Pacific Coast Doubles Championships before falling to Jack Jaede-Laurens Verboven of USC Sunday. The runner-up finish capped a productive weekend for UCLA men's tennis, which also had duo Maxime Cressy-Bryce Pereira earn the consolation championship at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club.
Each all-Bruin duo recorded at least one victory at the second-oldest tennis event in the United States.
Fifth-seeded Austin Rapp-Smith got its Pacific Coast Doubles journey started in the Round of 64 after earning a first-round bye. The duo breezed past Alfred Simental and Jake Williams of Claremont Mudd Scripps in an eight-game pro set, 8-1. The Bruins went on to dispatch Raul DeLaTorre and Jan Kirchhoff of nearby San Diego State, 8-5, before running into its first of four straight Pac-12 foes in the Round of 16.
The Stanford combo of Timothy Sah-David Wilczynski proved no match for Austin Rapp-Smith, as UCLA's senior-freshman team won in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3. That set up a date with No. 30 William Griffith-JT Nishimura of California, which gave the UCLA pair its stiffest test at that point. The Bruin team lost its first set to the Golden Bears and needed a second-set tiebreak to extend its run. The third set and match would ultimately go the way of the Bruins, 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-3, advancing the tandem to the semifinals and a matchup with Thomas Fawcett and William Genesen of Stanford. The Bruins would again need three sets against their fellow No. 5 seed, but proved too much with a 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 victory.
Less than a week after falling to the Bruins in a dual match at Los Angeles Tennis Center, USC watched its fifth-seeded duo of Jaede-Verboven take down Austin Rapp-Smith in the Pacific Coast Doubles final, 6-3, 6-4.
Despite the loss, UCLA would still see a championship performance at Pacific Coast Doubles, with Cressy-Pereira providing a redemptive performance in the consolation bracket. After narrowly dropping its Round of 64 match to Brady Draheim-Eleftherios Theodorou of Oklahoma State, 9-7, the ninth-seeded Bruin pair was given a first-round bye before running off six straight wins to secure the title. Cressy-Pereira knocked off teams from UC San Diego, UC Irvine, San Diego State and Boise State before taking down its second set of Tritons in the final. The UCLA duo took down Marc Isaia and Sreeganesh Manoharan of UCSD in three sets, 6-7, 6-2, 6-2.
Ben Goldberg and Evan Zhu, who reached the Pacific Coast Doubles semifinals with different partners in 2017, teamed to advance into the Round of 16 with a pair of 8-4 wins—including a Round of 32 triumph over teammates Connor Hance and Connor Rapp. Lucas Bellamy and Logan Staggs, meanwhile, defeated Samuel Gearou and Joseph Schwartz of Pomona Pitzer, 8-6, before falling to eventual champion Jaede-Verboven, 8-5.
Next up for UCLA is a trip north, where it will open Pac-12 play Friday, March 9 at Oregon (5 p.m.). The Bruins will continue their trip at Washington Sunday, March 11 (1 p.m.).