Wei-Yu Su and Minh Le found instant chemistry when they opened play last Monday and it carried over into yesterday afternoon's suspended final of the Blue Moon Men's Night Doubles.

Su and Le met up hours before their first match, but played like an experienced pair in winning four matches, including a victory over Jan Axel Tribler and Mikael Maatta, 6-3, 6-7 (3), 6-4, for the title at the Kailua Racquet Club.

"We started the match at 7 o'clock and I came out here at 5 o'clock, and we hit for about 45 minutes and we played," Le said of their first match.

Su and Le, the No. 3 seeds, split $2,600 for the victory, while Tribler and Maatta, the fifth seeds, pocketed $1,600.

Le said he is on a one-week vacation from the pro tour in Japan. He was looking to get in some work, and tennis official Bill Liston set he and Su up.

"I just came out here to have fun and it turned out to be a pretty good deal," said Le, who played at Cal from 1993-97.

Le said he hit with Su seven years ago at the Kailua Racquet Club after competing in a USTA Challenger event at Waikoloa, but that was the only time they were on the same court together.

It was the first Night Doubles final for all four competitors, the first final in the 36-year history of the event held on a Sunday and yesterday's final was the only one of 15 main-draw matches to go three sets.

The final was suspended by rain Saturday night with the score 1-1 and Le serving at 30-all. When play resumed yesterday, Tribler and Maatta won the next two points to break, then Tribler held serve to put the former Hawai'i Pacific University teammates up 3-1.

Su and Le bounced back by winning five consecutive games, yielding just nine points over the span.

"We work well and the personality works well. He's laid back and I'm easy-going," Su said of his chemistry with Le.

In the second set, Tribler and Maatta took a 3-0 lead. Su and Le tied it at 3 before rain delayed the match for 20 minutes.

On the first point after the delay, Tribler fell hard while chasing after an out-ball beyond the baseline.

"I'm OK, it was nothing, just a stunt for the spectators," he said.

Su, a former Brigham Young-Hawai'i standout, and Le broke Maatta's serve and Le held serve for a 5-3 advantage. Tribler and Maatta won the next three games, including saving one match point in the ninth game. Le held serve in the 12th game to send it to a tie-breaker.

"Both teams made each other play a lot, especially on the big points," Maatta said. "They didn't give anything to us and we tried not to give anything to them."

Maatta unleashed two well-placed lobs for points during the tie-breaker, and Le had hitting errors on the final three points.

"The ball seems like it's coming slow and all of a sudden the wind blows and you try to jump, but the ball is already gone. It's hard to adjust," Su said of Maatta's lobs.

The swirling winds also played havoc with the players' service tosses. Su aborted his serve at least five times and Le did so a couple of times.

In the third set, the teams split the first two games before four consecutive service breaks.

"After we won the second-set tie-breaker I thought we had them, and then we had an early break (in the third) as well," Tribler said. "I thought if we can hold our serve for a few times here we should be OK, but we lost momentum."

Le said the big point came when Su held serve in the ninth game.

"Wei-Yu had a big game at 4-all, he put us up 5-4 and that put all the pressure on them to hold to stay in the match," Le said. "That was a big deal right there."

Su and Le broke Tribler in the final game, with the match ending when Tribler hit a shot by Su into the net.

"In the third set it was a struggle the whole way because both of us were struggling with our serve and they were as well," Le said. "It came down to whoever could hold their serve at the end. We ended up stepping up a bit in that department."

Said Maatta: "We had a couple of opportunities to close it."

Tribler saw his serve broken four times; Maatta three times. Su was broken three times and Le twice.

"Minh helped me a lot," Su said. "I was struggling with my serve and he was at the net pumping me up and helped me put a lot of points away."

Reach Kyle Sakamoto at ksakamoto@honoluluadvertiser.com.