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Cal senior Alex Chang advanced in both doubles and singles on the first day of the annual San Francisco tournament.
SAN FRANCISCO – The California men’s tennis team won seven of eight matches to start the season Thursday in the Battle in the Bay Classic, an annual tournament co-hosted for the first time by the Golden Bears at the California Tennis Club. The Bears won all five of their singles matches and took two of three in doubles.
In the doubles opening round of 16, the fourth-seeded and 25th-ranked Cal pair of senior Carl Emil Overbeck and newcomer Theo Dean – a graduate transfer from Yale – defeated Arizona’s Jay Friend and Casper Christensen 8-6, and the 13th-ranked Alex Chang and Mikey Wright toppled Arizona State’s Nicola Cigna and Roi Ginat 8-3. Both duos advanced to the quarterfinals, while the Bears’ Derrick Chen and Timofey Stepanov fell to Illinois’ second-seeded Kenta Miyoshi and Karlis Ozolins 8-5 in the first round.
Dean is one of several players – including Overbeck – seeded fifth in singles. The first-year Bear, who’s ranked 44th, won in straight sets over Boise State’s Lukas Velik 6-3, 7-6(3) in the opening round of 32, while the 56th-ranked Overbeck beat the Sun Devils’ Cigna 6-4, 7-5. Chang – ranked 123rd in singles – bested Michigan State’s Danial Rakhmatullayev 6-4, 6-3, Derrick Chen beat Pepperdine’s 103rd-ranked Maxi Homberg 6-1, 2-6, 6-3, and Timofey Stepanov knocked off ASU’s Ginat 7-6(8), 3-6, 6-1 in Cal’s last match of the day.
The four-day tournament continues Friday starting with all four doubles quarterfinals, which begin at 9 a.m. PT. Dean and Overbeck face Texas Tech’s Tyler Stewart and Lorenzo Esquici, while Wright and Chang take on Michigan State’s Ozan Baris and Matthew Forbes. Stepanov and Chen would have moved onto the consolation draw but withdrew due to injury.
All five Bears playing in singles advanced to the round of 16, with all of the second-round matches scheduled to start at 11 a.m. Overbeck battles San Diego’s 106th-ranked Stian Klaassen, Dean plays Arizona’s Stian Klaassen, Chang faces Arizona’s fifth-seeded and 15th-ranked Jay Friend, Chen takes on another Arizona Wildcat in Zoran Ludoski and Stepanov plays UC Santa Barbara’s Dominique…
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