Oct. 18, 2006
MALIBU, Calif. - The San Diego State men's tennis team began play at the Wilson/ITA West Regionals with one opening round doubles match at the Ralphs-Straus Tennis Center. The team of redshirt freshman Michael Beron (San Diego, Calif.) and junior Nima Ossareh (Bethesda, Md.) lost in the opening round of the main doubles draw, 8-6, to Jordan Peana and Pedraum Rouhafza of UC Riverside.
The rest of the Aztec squad will be in action in both the singles and the doubles main draw. Senior Christian Groh (Crailsheim, Germany) enters the singles competition as the tournament's No. 4 seed and will square off with Arizona's Bruno Alcala on Thursday at 11 a.m. Classmate Markus Dickhardt (Marburg, Germany), the tournament's No. 7 seed, will play Mustafa Ulukan of UC Irvine at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday.
Junior Robert Sabo (Rancho Mirage, Calif) has an 11a.m. match with No. 1 seed Ben Kohlloeffel of UCLA while senior Anthony Gomez (Palm Desert, Calif.) will play Arizona State's Will Grist.
Freshman Achim Ceban, who took first place in the UNM Balloon Fiesta Classic singles "A" flight, will be in action at 12:30 p.m. versus Jack Marsh of Arizona State while Beron, who won the "B"-flight singles at the Balloon Fiesta Classic, will play No 2 seed Chris Surapol of UCLA. Rounding out the singles matches for SDSU is sophomore Billy Timu, who drew No. 9 seed Claudio Christen of Arizona.
In doubles, Ceban and Sabo will play in the field of 32 versus Dejan Cvetkovic and Jason McNaughton of USC while Gomez and Timu go up against Thomas Liversage and Charl Wolmarans of USD.