The top-seeded tandem of Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio have a prime opportunity to claim their eighth men's doubles title of 2025 together on Championship Sunday at the Rate Vegas Cup presented by Holland America.

Standing in their way, however, are No. 2 seeds Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu, who are familiar faces on the opposite side of the net.

Johns and Tardio reached the gold-medal match in Sin City by downing No. 3 seeds Federico Staksrud and Hayden Patriquin 14-12, 11-7 in a back-and-forth semifinal affair on Saturday.

Staksrud played on the left this time around, while Patriquin was featured on the right, which mandated some changes strategy-wise from the victors.

"It definitely gave us some different looks, definitely some patterns we weren't quite used to, and I think that showed. We didn't play a completely clean match. We definitely made some errors, and I think that was partially due to the different patterns and kind of different pressures applied," shared Johns. "I had to make some adjustments, but at the end of the night, I was just kind of trying to make balls, just play solid points out there, and find the spots. Overall, we did that, and it was a good match."

Tardio, meanwhile, relished the opportunity to battle directly with Patriquin.

Tardio and Patriquin are MLP teammates, of course, with the St. Louis Shock.

"Hayden is a great player. I think he was eating me up a little bit. His flick is so powerful, and you don't actually know when he's going to hit it, so I was definitely having a lot of trouble," mentioned Tardio. "He was getting me a lot of times, but I just decided to go a little more cross-court, get the ball away from him, and that worked out."

So what's the game plan to beat Alshon and Daescu and reign supreme again?

No real mystery here.

"They're a good team, so you just need to play solid and not make too many errors," insisted Johns. "I feel like we've established some good patterns, and we'll probably resort to those. If they change things up, we'll try to adapt. But, we'll just try to bring the same solid stuff."

Alshon and Daescu clinched their spot in the final by defeating No. 7 Eric Oncins and Matt Wright in the semis by a score of 11-9, 11-5.