Matthews, Hladek go back to back

SEAL BEACH — Magic wands, rabbits and top hats aren’t allowed on the courts at the Seal Beach Tennis Center.

That matters little to Corona del Mar High senior Dustin Hladek and junior Fabian Matthews. For the second straight year, they created some magic of their own on Saturday at the CIF Southern Section Individual Championships.

Hladek and Matthews defended their CIF doubles title with a somewhat anticlimactic 6-4, 6-1 win over Brian Fang and Jeff Kamei of Troy. With the win, they become the first team in over 30 years to win back-to-back CIF doubles titles; it hadn’t happened since CdM’s Jim Curley and Jordan Otterbein accomplished the feat in 1975 and ’76.

The Sea Kings’ Garrett Snyder won two straight doubles titles in 2001-02, but it was with two different partners — Brian Morton and Carsten Ball.

“We were pretty confident,” Hladek said. “When we’re both playing how we should play, I don’t think anybody can really beat us. I think we’ve proved that.”

Matthews quickly jumped in.

“I think we’ve proved it, too. A few times,” said Matthews, who also won the CIF Division of the Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament with Hladek last month. “It feels really good.”

One of those times — and the reason the championship match was so anticlimactic — was earlier Saturday, when Matthews and Hladek had an extremely intense semifinal against Tyler Bowman and Jon Kazarian of Peninsula. The CdM duo escaped with a 7-6 (5), 2-6, 7-5 win.

“We were scared about that match,” Matthews said. “That was the match to decide if we would win it or not win it.”

Hladek and Matthews were down, 5-3, in the third set before coming back to win. Just like when they were down a set against Santa Barbara’s Chris Ho and Billy Grokenberger at both last year’s CIF championship match and this year’s Ojai tournament, they somehow found a way to come back.

“We never really think that we’re out,” Hladek said. “We always think like, ‘We’re down, but we’ll come back.’ Pretty much every tight match we’ve played has been like that.”

CdM Coach Tim Mang also remembers the first round of his National High School Tennis All-American Tournament, when Matthews and Hladek came back from down 7-4 in an eight-game set against Crossroads’ Reese Milner and Clay Thompson.

“They’ve done that a lot,” Mang said. “That was the advantage they had. They knew what they had to do, I just reminded them every once in a while. Every once in a while, a reminder helps.”

There were no breaks in the first set against Bowman and Kazarian on Saturday. In the tiebreaker, Matthews and Hladek won when Bowman, serving at 5-6, double-faulted.

But Matthews suffered a rare break of serve to start the second set, and CdM was broken again later in the set, a 6-2 loss which set up a third set with a championship match berth at stake.

Hladek’s serve was broken early in the third set, and CdM was still down a break, 2-3, before breaking Bowman’s serve. Hladek ripped a backhand winner down the line, getting the match back on serve.

But Hladek was then broken again, and Kazarian held, giving Peninsula a 5-3 advantage.

It was the last game the Panthers duo would win. Kazarian, serving at 5-6, felt the pressure and double-faulted three times, eventually setting up CdM’s first match point.

“They got the momentum, and we got a little tight at the end,” Peninsula Coach Mike Hoeger said. “That’s tennis.”

CdM won it on Hladek’s cross-court lob shot that neither Peninsula player could reach.

In the championship match, Matthews and Hladek broke Troy in the opening game and cruised to a 3-0 lead before hanging on to win the first set, 6-4.

Matthews and Hladek also jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the second set, eventually winning the match — and the championship — when a Troy shot went long.

Fang and Kamei had extended Matthews and Hladek to three sets in last year’s CIF semifinals, but not this time around.

“Fabian’s got a bigger serve and a better volley this year,” Mang said. “Dustin has more confidence. They won CIF and they won Ojai, and how many people do that? That was the main reason they won that semifinal match [against Peninsula].

“They were there before, and they knew they could do it.”

Hladek and Matthews finish the season 18-0 as doubles partners, having dropped just two sets. They only lost once — in last year’s Pacific Coast League finals — in two years as a doubles team.

Steve Johnson of Orange beat Alex Brigham of Pacifica Christian to win his second consecutive CIF singles title, the first player to repeat in singles since Tom Leonard of Arcadia in 1965 and ’66.

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or at [email protected].