There’s No Shot at Twin Titles

The stands are full of family and friends. The matches are played within days of their birthday, providing snapshots of each stage of their development.

It took Bob and Mike Bryan six tries before they won their first Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament championship in 1993.

Then they took off.

The identical twins from Camarillo rattled off four consecutive doubles titles, growing from adolescents whose shy smiles glittered with orthodontics into confident junior national champions.

This year they returned to Ojai as Stanford freshmen and clear crowd favorites. But a more experienced UCLA doubles team of Alex Decret and Eric Taino snapped the Bryans’ Ojai winning streak with shocking ease, 6-2, 6-3, Saturday in a Pac-10 championship semifinal match at Libbey Park.

“We had a lot of chances to get back into the match,” Bob Bryan said. “We played badly and they played too tough.”

Decret, a junior from Santa Barbara, and Taino, a senior from New Jersey, exploited what is considered a weakness in the twins’ game: a lack of aggressiveness.

“It’s better to be aggressive than to be tentative and regret it later,” Decret said. “Our strategy was to go at them and not let up.”

Decret and Taino went right to work, winning the first two games and four of the first five. The second set was similar: After splitting the first two games, Decret and Taino won three games in a row to seize control of the match.

Rarely did the Bryans win points on the return. Bob Bryan’s best shots were delicate lobs into the corners. Mike Bryan, recently recovered from tendinitis in his left knee, was slow getting into position on some volleys.

Their vaunted finesse game simply dissipated into the afternoon heat.

“They are working on becoming more aggressive and I see a lot of progress,” Stanford Coach Dick Gould said. “Mike is getting back into shape but he’s still a little behind. I’d say Bob is on top of his game.”

Bob can prove it when he faces Stanford teammate Ryan Wolters today in the Pac-10 singles final. Bryan defeated No. 1-seeded Taino, 6-3, 6-4, in a semifinal Saturday, one day after Taino beat Mike Bryan, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

Although they’ve won numerous singles championships, the Bryans’ best tennis has been played as a doubles team. Bob is left-handed and Mike is right-handed, plus they hold the obvious advantage of having played together every day since they picked up rackets.

“A good doubles team are like brothers, and with the Bryans, they are brothers,” Gould said.

Win together, lose together.

After the match, talk turned to today’s singles final and how Bob can prevail.

For years, their parents, Wayne and Kathy, would not allow them to compete against one another in singles matches. Today, Bob doesn’t face his brother, but he does face a fellow Cardinal.

“I’m going to think of ways to beat him without allowing the match to get too heated,” Bob Bryan said. “We’ll keep in mind we’re teammates.”

As a doubles team, the Bryans set their sights on the NCAA championships, May 17-25 at UCLA.

“We love coming to Ojai, this will always be like our home court, but we’ll gladly give [Decret and Taino] this one if we beat them at the NCAAs,” Mike Bryan said.