UCLA
Pacific Coast Doubles Championship
Men's Tennis Heads South for Pacific Coast Doubles
March 04, 2020 | Men's Tennis
LA JOLLA, Calif. โ Coming off a thrilling 4-3 win over Pac-12 opponent Oregon, five pairs from the No. 22 UCLA men's tennis team look to stay hot as they head into the 131st Annual Pacific Coast Men's Doubles Championship. With the tournament slated to run Friday through Sunday at the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club, the 10 UCLA representatives, including assistant coach Rikus de Villiers, are scheduled to start as follows:
Ben Goldberg/Max Wild vs. Mark Peneff/Mateusz Smolicki (UC Irvine) โ Friday, March 6 (8 a.m.)
Bryce Pereira/Mathew Tsolakyan vs. Matteo Antonescu/Alex Fuchs โ Friday, March 6 (9 a.m.)
Eric Hahn/Blaine Hovenier vs. (13) Matthew Pearce/Brad Pearce โ Friday, March 6 (9 a.m.)
(7) Drew Baird/Connor Rapp vs. TBD โ Friday, March 6 (1:30 p.m.)
(1) Keegan Smith/Rikus De Villiers vs. TBD โ Friday, March 6 (2:15 p.m.)
Baird/Rapp and Smith/de Villiers have first-round byes. The complete Pacific Coast Doubles draw can be found HERE.
The Bruins will utilize this weekend to develop their familiarity with one another as the five pairings have only 15 official doubles matches together this season. The pair of Baird and Rapp possesses the most experience in doubles matches together, most recently posting a 6-3 win against Thibault Cancel and Adam Torocsik of Washington.
Smith will be switching things up this tournament and playing with de Villiers as one of the tournament's No. 1-seeded pairs. Smith normally partners with Govind Nanda, with the tandem ranking 29th nationally. De Villiers won the 130th Annual Pacific Coast Men's Doubles Championship with Nanda, as they took down USC's Brandon Holt and Riley Smith in the final match.
Last year's Pacific Coast Doubles tournament also featured the pairs of (8) Bryce Pereira/Patrick Zahraj and (9) Eric Hahn/Matthew Tsolakyan. Both advanced to the Round of 32 before falling to Jan Kirchhoff/Ignacio Martinez of San Diego State and Jack Katzman/Robert Liu of Claremont Mudd Scripps, respectively. The team of (9) Ben Goldberg/Connor Rapp advanced to the Round of 16 as well, eventually falling to the second-seeded California duo of Jacob Brumm and Yuta Kikuchi.
Players Mentioned
