The San Diego State men's tennis team travels to Malibu, Calif. this weekend to take part in the USTA/ITA Southwest Regional Championship. The event will run from Oct. 20-24 on the campus of Pepperdine University.
Twelve other teams in addition to the Aztecs will be in attendance, including Cal Poly, Fresno State, Hawaii, Loyola Marymount, Pacific, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, USC, San Diego and Pepperdine. One round of doubles and two rounds of singles will open action on Thursday morning
SDSU will have three teams competing in doubles play. Freddy Gelbrich and Hunter Nicholas will face off against Hawaii's Dmytro Kovalyov and Jared Spiker. Andranik Khachatryan and Derek Siddiqui, meanwhile, will play against Jean-Charles Diame and Sai Karik Nakireddi of Fresno State. Rounding out Aztecs in doubles competition will be Thorsten Bertsch and Jose Sierra Short, who will open play against the UC Irvine duo of Jacab Jung and Shuhei Shibahara.
In singles play, San Diego State will have eight players in action on Thursday. Two Aztecs have already earned a first round bye and will open play later in the day. Khatchatryan will face off in the second round against the winner of David Ayoun (Fresno State) and Ben Mirkin (Pacific). Javier Pulgar, the 14th seed, will play the winner of the matchup between Axel Bouillin (UCSB) and Felix Macherez (UC Riverside).
The remaining six players were open play on Thursday morning. Juan Florez will face off against Jean-Charles Diame of Fresno State. Gelbrich opens play against Cal Poly's Brian McPhee. Bertsch, meanwhile, will play against Jonny Wang of USC. The remaining matchups for the Aztecs will be Shiva Sangwan facing off against David Sofaer of Pepperdine, Nicholas playing against LMU's Sebastian Bustamante and Sierra Short opening action against Sebastian Bell of Cal Poly.
For updated brackets and results, check Pepperdine's Tournament Central Page.