Taft Cruises to Title Match : Tennis: Toreadors rout Granada Hills to reach City 4-A final.

Granada Hills High boys’ tennis Coach Ron Wood on Wednesday did not wear the proud look of a man who had brought his team to the threshold of a City Section championship.

He looked helpless.

Wood shrugged, shook his head and winced as Taft routed his Highlanders, 18 1/2-11, at the Racquet Centre and advanced to the 4-A team championship match May 11.

Second-seeded Taft will face top-seeded Palisades (14-1) in the final.

What figured to be a tight semifinal battle between the Toreadors and Granada Hills--considering the teams had split two matches during the regular season--was a lopsided affair, thanks to a different scoring system in the playoffs.

Instead of having the Nos. 1-4 singles players and 1-3 doubles teams go head-to-head in a best-of-three-sets format, the City Section opted for a round-robin format for the playoffs in which each singles player and each doubles team plays one set against each counterpart.

Taft feasted on Granada Hills with the new format, winning 14 of 16 singles sets for all but one of the points it needed to advance.

“This favors singles, and our strength is doubles,” Wood said. “I took my top two singles players and made them my No. 3 doubles team. But it’s not working.”

Those singles players, Jason Lieber and Alan Dominguez (who swung his racket with a broken arm), posted three victories at No. 3 doubles, but that didn’t put a dent in Taft (12-1), which advanced to the final for the third season in a row.

Granada Hills (13-4), making its first semifinal appearance in four years, lost to Taft, 5-2, in the first round of the Northwest Valley Conference season, but won, 4-3, in the second.

“We swept in doubles and Evan Press won in singles,” Wood said. “And (Taft) had everybody there.”

Press won only one of four sets Wednesday. The 5-foot-7 sophomore, who weighs less than 100 pounds, was blown off the court, 6-0, by Dylan Mann in the set that clinched the victory.

“It’s like a college guy trying to play one on one with Michael Jordan,” said Evan’s father, Steve Press, after Mann, the City singles runner-up last year, ran his record to 10-0 in matches and 8-0 in playoff sets.

With Golan Sassoon and Ali Fatourechi also winning all four sets at Nos. 2 and 3 singles, Taft needed only one set in doubles, which awards 1 1/2 points, compared to one point in singles. Vince Khazanov and Jessie Suri, at No. 1 doubles, and David Moren and Farhad Amid, at No. 2, each won a set.