USC plays in prestigous doubles tournament

The Trojans made camp in San Diego for the Pacific Coast Doubles Championships exhibition tournament in La Jolla, California, this past weekend.

After falling in a 4-3 upset loss to then-ranked No. 51 Tulsa on Feb. 28, the No. 6 USC men’s tennis team picked itself up with a 5-2 win at No. 32 San Diego last Thursday. USC head coach Peter Smith believes his team’s 4-3 loss to Tulsa last week was a nice reality check for his players before heading down to San Diego.

“Winning as much as we’ve won, you take it for granted a little bit,” Smith said. “We brought a lot of guys to play, they need some experience, and hopefully I think that’ll be a good lesson for us in the end.”

Smith felt that, overall, the team regrouped well in practice following the upset.

“I think the perfect season is one where you overcome adversity,” Smith said. “That certainly was an adversity for us, and I think we’ve done a great job in the last week of putting it behind us and working really hard. We had a good match against a really good team like San Diego, so we have ways to go forward.”

Going up against San Diego on Thursday, the Trojans came out of the gate neck-and-neck with the Toreros in doubles competition. The senior Trojan pair of Yannick Hanfmann and Roberto Quiroz, the No. 2-ranked doubles team in the nation, took down the Torero team of Jordan Angus and Filip Vittek, 6-3, to open the day.

San Diego would then bounce back as the team of Ciaran Fitzgerald and Geoffrey Fosso defeated the Trojan freshman duo of Thibault Forget and Tanner Smith, 7-5. The rubber match of doubles competition came down to the very end — senior Eric Johnson and junior Max De Vroome fell via tiebreaker to the Toreros’ Romain Kalaydjian and Uros Petronijevic 7-6(6), clinching the doubles point for San Diego.

Trailing 0-1 after doubles, the Trojans powered back in the singles competition. No. 31-ranked senior Jonny Wang made quick work of Angus to get things going, defeating him 6-2, 6-4 to put the teams on terms at 1-1 and get things going for the Trojans. Next, No. 72 de Vroome took down Fosso 6-3, 6-3 to give the Trojans their first lead at 2-1. The score was soon brought level again, however, as the Toreros’ Petronijevic upset Hanfmann, ranked No. 6 nationally, 7-6(6), 6-2.

But Hanfmann’s doubles partner would help avenge his loss, as No. 20 Quiroz claimed victory over Vittek 7-6(6), 6-2 to put the Trojans back up 3-2. Quiroz would spark a three-match run for the Trojans – No. 45 sophomore Nick Crystal would defeat Fitzgerald 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 and Johnson would overcome Angus 7-6(4), 4-6, 6-2 to capture the final two points as well as the 5-2 victory for USC.

Playing in the Pacific Coast Doubles Tournament over the following three days, the Trojans faced pairs from nine other schools including Rice, Pepperdine, Stanford and UCLA. In the men’s open doubles tournament, the duo of Johnson and de Vroome won six matches to reach the championship round, but narrowly fell in the final to UCLA’s Marcos Giron and Dennis Novikov 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-4.

At the doubles tournament over the weekend, Smith took pride in being asspciated with the tournament’s history.

“It’s actually a really special doubles tournament,” Smith said. “It’s the oldest tennis tournament in the history of the United States. I don’t know exactly, but it’s like 120 years old. A lot of history has been played at the La Jolla Beach Tennis Club, so it [was] a pretty special place to be.”

De Vroome and Johnson will get their shot at redemption next week as the Trojans are next set to face their cross-town rivals, UCLA, March 14 at Marks Stadium. Having started the season atop the national rankings, the Trojans will look to regain ground after the upset to Tulsa dropped them five spots, though Smith is not too concerned about his team’s ranking just yet.

“I knew we’d drop at [the loss to Tulsa],” Smith said. “The funny thing is we were going to drop anyway with how the rankings work, but the most important thing is: are we the best team. The only thing that matters is, are we ready when the NCAAs come around. [Making sure we’re ready is] my job. We’ve always been able to do that in the past. Being the best team we can be is so important, and we’ll be there.”