La Jolla Juniors Overmatched in Tourney

La Jolla High’s James Conda and Jonathon Elsberry are only months away from playing their first college tennis match. But Friday in the second round of the Pacific Coast Men’s Doubles tournament, months looked more like years.

Conda and Elsberry, the No. 1-ranked junior doubles team in Southern California, were swept away in 35 minutes by Cal’s Matt Lucena and Tom Phanco, 6-3, 6-1, at La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club.

To their credit, Conda and Elsberry were not just playing any college doubles team. Lucena is the two-time defending NCAA doubles champion--winning in 1990 with Doug Eisenman and last year with Bent Ove-Pederson. He and Phanco, who played at Bishop’s High, are the tournament’s third seed.

Still, Conda and Elsberry said they could have at least been competitive. But it’s hard to compete when you’re beaten before the match starts.

“From the beginning, we were intimidated,” Elsberry said.

It showed.

Elsberry, who signed a letter of intent to play at Rice during the fall, had his serve broken in the first game. It wasn’t too long before Elsberry and Conda’s spirits were broken too.

“We decided before that we would go out go for a game, but when that didn’t work, we were in trouble,” Elsberry said.

Even though they took three games in the first set, Conda said he was far from confident going into the second.

“We’d win a game, but then they’d come right back,” Conda said. “We could never get any rhythm. I don’t think we ever felt comfortable.”

They felt even less comfortable in the second set when they starting missing easy overheads and volleys. The set lasted just 15 minutes.

Although Conda and Elsberry have played together for years, neither of them has spent much time on the court lately. They spent last week taking in the men’s professional tournament at Indian Wells instead of practicing for this weekend’s tournament.

“We worked out hard (Thursday),” Elsberry said. “But we were like, ‘Well, let’s go out and play the Pacific Coast doubles. We could do that in the juniors. Sometimes even on a bad day, we’d pull through. You can’t do that in a tournament like this.”

Conda, who is close to signing with Arizona, said the lack of preparation was apparent.

“We were just playing by ourselves,” he said. “We weren’t playing as a team at all.”

Conda and Elsberry did play well enough to beat San Diego’s Scott McFarland and Brian Talgo, 6-7, 6-3, 6-3, in their first round match.

They will get a chance to redeem themselves at next month’s Ojai junior tournament, where there will be no Lucena and Phanco.