Newport girls double trouble

COSTA MESA ? Melissa Matsuoka and Elizabeth Nguyen are now two for two.

After winning the War by the Shore tournament a week earlier, the pair of Corona del Mar High freshmen-to-be captured the girls’ 14 doubles championship on Friday at the 14th annual Costa Mesa Summer Junior Classic.

Matsuoka and Nguyen, both from Newport Beach, outlasted Natasha Boulad of Laguna Beach and Amber Nelson of Temecula, 4-6, 6-3, 10-8, in a super-tiebreaker at the Costa Mesa Tennis Center.

In the boys’ 14 doubles championship match, Newport Beach’s Ryan Peyton and teammate Shane Korber of Laguna Beach fell to No. 1-seeded Reo Asami of Irvine and Jonathan Huang of Santa Ana, 6-1, 6-2.

The second girls’ 14 doubles triumph for Matsuoka and Nguyen wasn’t bad for a pair of best friends who had never played competitive doubles together before last week.

Matsuoka, who usually plays singles, hadn’t played many super-tiebreakers before in her young career.

“It was awesome,” she said. “Every point was really important. We just really had to focus and concentrate more; play it point by point.”

The super-tiebreaker, often played in place of a third set, awards victory to the first team to 10 points. Friday’s super-tiebreaker was tense throughout. Neither team took more than a one-point lead until Matsuoka’s volley at the net produced a 9-7 advantage.

After Boulad-Nelson got the next point on an unforced error, Nelson’s volley missed wide, and Matsuoka and Nguyen had their second title in as many weeks.

Nguyen said she knew they were probably in for a fight in the final, after breezing through their semifinal, 6-1, 6-1 on Thursday.

“We knew that [Friday] would probably be harder,” Nguyen said. “We just kept concentrating and playing our game.”

The opening set was contested without any service breaks until the 10th game, when Boulad-Nelson broke at 15-40 to take the set.

The second set, by contrast, was full of breaks.

Matsuoka and Nguyen were up, 2-0, before Boulad and Nelson took two consecutive games to knot the score. But Matsuoka and Nguyen broke serve twice more, breaking at love on a pair of Matsuoka overhead slams to improve to 5-2.

Boulad and Nelson answered with their own break of serve, but Matsuoka and Nguyen did likewise to take the set and send it to the super-tiebreaker.

The super-tiebreaker was tied, 7-7, before Nguyen’s return of serve to Nelson’s feet produced a point.

Then came Matsuoka’s volley to give the Newport Beach residents a pair of match points.

“It feels really good to win, especially since we’ve only been playing together for two weeks,” said Matsuoka, who advanced to the girls’ 14 singles final at the Costa Mesa Summer Junior Classic last year.

In the boys’ 14 doubles championship, Peyton and Korber had a tough match. They were down, 3-0, in the first set before Peyton held serve, but lost the next three games.

In the second set, the team broke Asami and Huang early to level the set at 1-1. But Asami and Huang took control, winning five of the final six games.

Peyton, who will be a freshman at Corona del Mar High in the fall, usually plays singles.

“We’re just starting out as a doubles team, but we keep playing better and better every match,” Peyton said. “But they were good.”