LOS ANGELES – UCLA men's tennis officially kicked off its fall schedule in a week that five saw Bruins travel to tournaments in Tulsa, Okla. and Santa Barbara, Calif.
Sophomore Keegan Smith, ranked No. 28 in the Oracle/ITA preseason singles rankings, took part in the Saint Francis Health System ITA Men's All-American Championships beginning Thursday. His debut match in the tournament was a successful one, as the San Diego native dealt qualifier Yuta Kikuchi of California a 6-4, 7-5 loss.
The next day saw Smith go head to head with the nation's No. 2 player and tournament top seed, Nuno Borges of Mississippi State. In a rematch of the pair's 2018 NCAA Singles Championships First-Round clash that nearly saw Smith pull the upset, the combatants would again go three sets. Borges initially displayed why he is among the nation's best, taking six of seven games in the opening set. Smith charged back, though, doubling up the Portuguese senior by a 6-3 margin to force the deciding frame. Borges ultimately proved too much, though, edging Smith in the third set, 6-4. Borges will face off with Ohio State's JJ Wolf in Monday's final.
The UCSB Classic marked the debuts of two UCLA freshmen, as Mathew Tsolakyan and Max Wild made up half of a Bruin quartet of participants that also included sophomores Connor Hance and Connor Rapp.
Hance and Tsolakyan were picked to the singles A Flight draw and each faced a stiff test in the opening round. In his debut against Will Genesen of Stanford, Tsolakyan went tit for tat with the Pac-12 veteran in the first set. Genesen eventually buried the Glendale, Calif. native in the second, however, taking the match by a 7-5, 6-2 score. Hance also dropped his first-round match, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 against Hiro Koyanagi of host UCSB, but would go on to pick up a consolation win over Washington's Jack Davis, 7-5, 6-2.
Rapp won his singles B Flight opener, 6-3, 6-2 over Chethan Swanson of UC Davis, before bowing out in straight sets against UCSB's Joseph Rotheram. Rapp would eventually knock off Gauchos Alex Dominguez Soto (6-2, 6-4) and Anders Holm (1-6, 6-4, 7-5) in consolation action, though, to take fifth place in the draw.
Wild's Bruin debut tournament was one to remember, as the Las Vegas native won twice in the singles C Flight. It was an all-Pac-12 trip for Wild, who defeated Evan Felcher of Oregon (7-6 [6], 6-2) and Sebastian Hawken of Washington (7-6, 3-6, 6-4) before being forced to retire versus California's Can Kaya, 4-6, 6-4, 3-1, ret. Kaya took the draw's top spot.
In the doubles A Flight, Hance and Rapp teamed for a trip to the consolation final, which it dropped to the UCSB team of Rotheram and Victor Krustev, 8-1. The freshman team of Tsolakyan and Wild won its first match as a tandem, 8-2 over the Washington pair of Sebastian Hawken and Ernesto Turegano Julian. Tsolakyan-Wild also knocked off Cal Poly's freshman team of Cambell Nakayama and Karapet Vardanyan in a close one, 8-7 (5), before falling to Oregon's Joshua Charlton-Ty Gentry in the final.