After leading Hawaii Pacific University’s tennis teams to successful seasons in the spring, Hendrik Bode and Nikola Petrov capped their summer with a comeback victory over the reigning champions of the Creative Energy/Blue Moon Men’s Night Doubles tournament at Kailua Racquet Club on Saturday.

The top-seeded team of Dennis Lajola and Ikaika Jobe, both four-time champions in the event, appeared poised to add another title to their collections after cruising through the first set of the final.

But Bode, the head coach of the HPU men’s team, and Petrov, an assistant with the women’s team, battled back to win a tiebreaker in the second set and claimed the third in a 1-6, 7-6 (5), 6-4 victory.

"We started pretty slow, that already happened a couple of matches," Petrov said. "Every game especially starting the second set, we knew we can do way better than this. We stayed focused, we just believed in ourselves and we came through all the way."

Bode led HPU to a 19-0 regular season and a runner-up finish in the NCAA Division II tournament and was named ITA Coach of the Year.

Petrov was a graduate assistant with the HPU women’s team that went 21-7 and reached the round of 16 at the NCAA championships.

Along the way Bode applied some of the coaching points he preached to his players during the comeback.

"That actually really helped, absolutely," Bode said. "You remind yourself of the things you try to tell your players — just stay calm, don’t get rattled. Sometimes you lose a set in 15 minutes, it happens. Stay in there try to get one point at a time and don’t look too far ahead."

Bode and Petrov, the tournament’s third-seeded duo, had to get past two of the tournament’s most successful pairs on consecutive nights to claim their first title. They advanced to the final with a three-set victory over two-time champions Mikael Maatta and Jan Axel Tribler on Friday, then went to three sets again on Saturday against Lajola and Jobe.

"It’s a great honor for us," Petrov said. "Playing in front of so many people is such a blessing, and it brings the best out of us."

Jobe and Lajola went up a break in the second game of the match and cruised through the first set.

Petrov changed his shirt during the break and opened the second set with an ace, and the duo’s fortunes shifted.

They broke Jobe’s serve early, gave it back midway through the set and the teams stayed on serve to force the tiebreaker. Bode and Petrov earned a point on Jobe’s serve off a Petrov forehand to start a four-point run. Down 6-3, Jobe and Lajola held off two set points before Jobe’s return of Bode’s serve sailed long to send the match into a third set.

Bode and Petrov took a 3-2 lead with a break of Lajola’s serve and led 5-4 with Bode going back to serve.

He double-faulted on break points twice in the first set, but ripped four big serves with the title on the line to close out the victory.

"We played a lot of close matches this tournament and this last service game was really the only one I really wasn’t that nervous," Bode said.

In the third-place match, Maatta and Tribler defeated Marcel Chan and Carter Lam 8-6.