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By Hannah Gordon

Daily Bruin Contributor

It is hard to know how your opponent will play in a tournament. Unless, of course, you play against your opponent every day in practice.

In a surprising turn of events, UCLA’s No. 1 doubles team of junior Petya Marinova and freshman Lauren Fisher faced UCLA’s No. 2 doubles team of sophomore Sara Walker and freshman Mariko Fritz-Krockow in the finals of the Pac-10 Conference Championships.

Walker and Fritz-Krockow upset their teammates 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 to take the title.

After a disappointing season with a 3-5 record in the Pac-10, the Bruins surprised everyone by taking home not only the doubles title, but the team title. The title is determined by the number of individual matches won by each team at the tournament.

“We were so excited when we both won our semifinals because it meant we won the Pac-10,” Fisher said.

At the same time, they realized they would have to face each other as opponents the next day.

“You don’t want to play someone you train with every day, because they know how you play,” Marinova said.

Fritz-Krockow agreed.

“The whole match must have looked oddly simple because we anticipated them and they anticipated us,” she said.

To compensate, the players tried to mix up their usual patterns.

“All of us were changing directions when we shouldn’t have because we knew where the other person was going and vice versa,” Fisher said.

Marinova and Fisher won the first set 6-3, but relaxed and started to slip up and lose consistency. Both are emotional players, and Walker and Fritz-Krockow capitalized on their frustration by staying steady and waiting for their opponent to make the errors, rather than going for the big shots.

“It was the best I’ve seen Mariko and Sara play together,” said Head Coach Stella Sampras. “Petya and Lauren couldn’t keep it up in the second and third set, which was disappointing because they are better than that. They played an unbelievable match in the semifinals.”

The Bruins performed well in singles as well in order to win the Pac-10 title. Walker, last year’s Pac-10 singles champion, advanced to the semifinals, where she lost 6-3, 3-6, 1-6 to Arizona State’s Adria Engel, the eventual tournament champion.

“Adria is a great player,” Sampras said. “She got an opening in the second set and started playing better while Sara lost a little momentum.”

Fisher gave a solid performance in the first two rounds to make the quarterfinals where she was defeated by USC’s Maureen Diaz 6-4, 6-3.

“She is the type of player who stays steady at the baseline and always gets the ball back,” Fisher said of her opponent, to whom she lost previously this season.

Junior Catherine Hawley fell 6-2, 6-0 in the first round to California’s Christina Fusano.

In the invitational tournament, Jennifer Donahue, Chelsea Godbey, and Michelle Steifel all lost their first round matches. Fritz-Krockow, however, won 7-6, 6-0 in her first round match before falling 6-3, 6-1 in the second round to Washington’s Erin Hoe.