Duke's Dynamic Doubles Tandem
Pedro Rodenas and Garrett Johns took top ranking and seeding into NCAA doubles tournament
Jim Sumner, GoDuke The Magazine
College tennis matches largely are decided by six singles matches.
Note the qualifier. Largely.
College tennis is fascinating. Six simultaneous singles matches, courts side-by-side-by side. Each match best two of three. The team that wins the most singles matches usually wins the overall match.
But these six singles matches start only after the doubles point has been decided. Three doubles teams play one set. The first school to win two sets wins the doubles point.
It’s only a point. It might seem minor. But win that doubles point and you have to win three singles matches. Lose that doubles point and you have to win four singles matches.
Not so minor after all.
“It sets a tone,” Duke men’s coach Ramsey Smith says.
Duke sophomore Pedro Rodenas adds another wrinkle. “It helps us a lot to be more free when we go out there and play singles. It’s like ‘Okay, we’ve got the doubles point’ so it lets us play with more freedom.”
Rodenas helped his team gain lots of freedom in a 2024 season that ended in the NCAA Tournament round of 16 with a loss to fourth-seeded TCU, the eventual national champ. He’s one half of the nation’s top-ranked doubles tandem, teaming with fifth-year senior Garrett Johns.
Rodenas is a native of Madrid. “My goal was to play pro,” he says, “but my parents wanted me to come to the U.S., study and play tennis.” His mother Fony contacted Smith and it went from there. “I thought it was a good fit and ended up here.”
Smith says the pandemic complicated Duke’s efforts to recruit Rodenas. “The recruitment was over Zoom during covid. The first time I saw him in person was Junior Wimbledon, when he made the semis.”
It was a good time and place to make a first impression. Rodenas and fellow Spaniard Martin Landaluce advanced to the boys doubles at the 2022 Wimbledon Junior Championships, where they lost to Americans Sebastian Gorzny and Alex Michelsen. Rodenas also won the 2021 Spanish Junior national title.
Mom was right. He was good enough for Duke.
Given Rodenas’ demonstrated skill at doubles, it made sense to pair him with Garrett Johns, Duke’s top returning doubles player.
Johns comes from a tennis family; his mother Lynn played at Villanova. In a sport dominated by monster serves, Johns is a modest 5-foot-11, 155 pounds. His superpower is his ability to chase down opposing shots and return them, one after another after another. The longer the point goes, the more likely he is to win that point.
He’s been Duke’s top singles player most of his career and has accumulated numerous individual accolades — All-American, All-ACC, All-ACC Academic Honor Roll, team captain.
Johns also excelled as a doubles player. He teamed with four different partners as a freshman in 2019-20 before largely pairing with Sean Sculley the next two seasons.
Sculley graduated following the 2021-22 season. Johns needed a new partner and Duke was bringing in a freshman with demonstrated doubles skills. Pairing Johns and Rodenas “made a lot of sense,” Johns says. The prototypical no-brainer.
They were pretty good together last season, reaching number 20 in the ITA doubles rankings and winning one match in the NCAAs, an upset over Georgia’s fourth-seeded Trent Bryde and Ethan Quinn.
Would there be a 2024 repeat?
The ball was in Johns’ court, so to speak. Last spring he approached Smith with an idea. Johns would take off the fall 2023 semester and play some low-level pro tournaments and return to Duke for the spring 2024 season. Smith was more than okay with the idea.
“He came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I want to stay if you can find a spot for me.’ And somehow, someway, I found a spot for him,” Smith deadpanned.
“I definitely want to play pro tennis after,” Johns said, “but I love this group of guys so much so I took some time off in the fall but came back in the spring to give it one more go. I thought it was a great choice to come back.”
“It’s just crazy how much he’s progressed and matured,” Smith says. “He’s the most low-maintenance guy on the team. He restrings his racket once a month. He just goes out and competes and plays tennis. The mental side has been his greatest growth. He’s got a chance to win NCAAs, singles or doubles. He has that ability.”
Johns usually at number one singles and Rodenas usually at number two anchored a successful season for Duke. Both received at-large invitations to the 64-player NCAA singles field, though both dropped their opening-round match. Johns was ranked 22nd nationally, Rodenas 43rd.
But they’ve been even better in doubles competition. They certainly complement each other. Johns is a 5-11 right-hander with a finesse game, Rodenas a 6-3 left-hander with a power game.
“I think that he’s lefty and I’m righty, so that’s difficult on opponents,” Johns says. “We can read each other and know where we’re going to go really well. I think we know where each of us is going to hit each ball, so we know where to move together the more we play. We really play well together.”
“They’re two high-level tennis players,” Smith says. “They have the ultimate respect for each other. Garrett is kind of the setter, Pedro a little bit more the finisher. They just gel. They know their set patterns and how they’re going to play. Ultimately, they’re two great tennis players who have great chemistry.”
Smith goes out of his way to praise Duke’s doubles coach Maciek Sykut, saying he does “a great job” with the doubles teams. Sykut was just named head coach of the Elon men’s team.
Rodenas says that chemistry extends to more than just knowing where to be and what to do. “He’s my best friend out there. I think we just try not to take it too seriously and just have fun out there. That’s when we play our best.
He’s one of the most talented guys I’ve ever played with, so it’s always cool to see what kind of shots he’s going to hit. I know he’s always going to have my back, he’s going to get everything and I can bring out the firepower.”
Johns and Rodenas began the spring season ranked 29th in the ITA doubles rankings but continued to move up as the victories mounted.
They moved up to number six after beating Florida State’s 14th-ranked doubles team of Antoine Cornut-Chauvnic and Joshua Dous-Karpenschif and the ninth-ranked Louisville tandem of Etienne Donnet and Natan Rodrigues. They jumped to number one after a win over top-ranked DK Suresh Ekambaram and Holden Koons of Wake Forest.
Rodenas says the duo “enjoys the pressure. It’s been great fun to play at number one.”
They had a streak of 12 straight wins before losing to TCU’s Jake Fearnley/Perdo Vives in the NCAA team competition.
But that didn’t end their season. In addition to their singles invite they were selected for the doubles championship, also held at Stillwater, Okla.
Johns and Rodenas are the second Duke doubles team to enter the NCAA Tournament as the top seeded duo, joining Henrique Cunha and Carleton Reid from 2010. Reid and Cunha reached the quarterfinals before losing. Johns and Rodenas advanced to the quarterfinals of this year’s tourney just as this magazine was being released.
This story originally appeared in the 15.10 issue of GoDuke The Magazine . Dedicated to sharing the stories of Duke student-athletes, present and past, GoDuke The Magazine is published for Duke Athletics by LEARFIELD with editorial offices at 3100 Tower Blvd., Suite 404, Durham, NC 27707. To subscribe, join the Iron Dukes or call (336) 831-0767.