SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State men's tennis team will send all nine of its players to the ITA Southwest Regional Championships this weekend, Oct. 20-24, at the Ralphs-Straus Tennis Center on Pepperdine's campus in Malibu, Calif. All nine Aztecs will play singles with eight pairing up in doubles play. It is the first time this season that the entire roster is competing in the same tournament. The first two rounds of singles in the seven round event are scheduled to take place on Thursday.
AZTEC NOTES:
Sophomore Alexander Mandma, who enters the weekend with a 4-3 mark, begins his tournament against Loyola Marymount's Emin Torlic.
Making a return after four weeks of not competing, Lenny Melzer returns in a matchup with Grand Canyon's Paolo Rosati.
Chikaya Sato looks to get back to his season-opening weekend form when he won two of three matches at the Battle in the Bay Qualifying. In his opening matchup in Malibu, he faces Fernando Fonseca from Cal Poly.
Coming off a weekend where he was 1-1 with the win against the No. 46-ranked player in the nation, 32nd-seed Johannes Seeman battles Cal Poly's Joseph Leather.
Winner of three of his last four matches, Bora Sengul will be competing for the first time since the ITA All-American Championships at the beginning of October. He plays William Alsterback of Grand Canyon.
A transfer from Nebraska, Andre Saleh faces Grand Canyon's Loic Van Zeggelaar in a Thursday first round matchup.
With five victories so far this year, Mathieu Josserand is the team's co-leader in wins and will face UCLA's Jeffrey Fradkin in the opening round.
Liam Spiers, who posted a 2-1 record at the UCSB Fall Classic two weeks ago, will take on Nicola Cigna of Arizona State.
Riding a three-match winning streak, the longest current streak on the team, Eugenio Gonzalez Fitzmaurice seeks to continue his winning ways against UC
Santa Barbara's Pierre Boullenger in a rematch from the UCSB Fall Classic, when Gonzalez Fitzmaurice finished on top 7-5, 6-4.
In doubles, Spiers and Saleh will start with Hawai'i's Andy Hernandez and Kilian Maitre on Thursday morning.
Also playing against a pair of Rainbow Warriors, Gonzalez Fitzmaurice and Josserand will battle Andre Ilagan and Karl Collins.
Seeman and Mandma are seeded 13th in doubles and earned a first-round bye. In the second round, playing together for the first time this season, the pair will duel against the winner of the match between Grand Canyon's Jonathan Da Silva and Van Zeggelaar and Cal Poly's Benjamin Keyser and Carter Crookston.
Sato and Sengul, who paired up 12 times as members of the 2021-22 Penn State men's tennis team, will be working together for the third time in the Scarlet in Black when they play Loyola Marymount's John Bryan Otico and Arthur Craig Pantino.
You can follow the action on the ITA website: https://bit.ly/3VKIEZg
Live Streams are also available: https://bit.ly/2PQow4V