The wealth of junior tennis talent in San Diego is in rich supply, as the SoCal Pro Series has showcased and helped to develop for three years running. Among those San Diegan teenage prospects lies Alyssa Ahn.

Her steady rise from those first-round, paying-your-dues type of defeats as a fresh-faced 15-year-old making her ITF World Tour/USTA Pro Circuit debut on the 2022 SoCal Pro Series, to the respectable second-round defeats of last year and establishing a WTA world ranking foundation, have led to the breakthrough she’s been working towards in the 2024 series.

Playing in her 11th SoCal Pro Series event overall at a still tender age of 17, Ahn advanced to her first $15,000-purse ITF World Tour/USTA Pro Circuit women’s singles semifinal on Saturday following a 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 quarterfinal upset over No. 3 seed Hong Yi Cody Wong, of Hong Kong.

Ahn’s Saturday semifinal opponent is 26-year-old Sara Daavettila, a past NCAA All-American at North Carolina who won last week’s SoCal Pro Series women’s singles tournament at Barnes Tennis Center. 

Outside of the SoCal Pro Series – home to 11 of the 19 pro-level events she has participated in – Ahn has been building a tennis resume that is upwardly trending. She won the 2021 CIF-San Diego Section Individual singles championship as a 14-year-old freshman at Torrey Pines High School before taking to a national stage to gain the singles title at the 2022 USTA Billie Jean King Girls’ 16s National Championships.

Ahn competed in the qualifying draw at the San Diego Open (WTA Tour 500 event) each of the past two years.

One women’s singles quarterfinal featured a carryover of the USC-UCLA rivalry onto the SoCal Pro Series. Fifth-seeded Eryn Cayetano, who was raised in Long Beach and Corona and just finished her NCAA career with the Trojans, rolled to a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Irvine resident Anne-Christine Lutkemeyer, who recently completed her sophomore season with the Bruins.

Cayetano, 23, won the first of her two ITF World Tour/USTA Pro Circuit ($15,000-purse) singles titles on the SoCal Pro Series at Jack Kramer Club (Rolling Hills Estates) in 2022. She will face top-seeded Fiona Crawley (No. 382 WTA ranking), a University of North Carolina senior in 2023-24, in a Saturday semifinal.

On the men’s side of competition, University of San Diego rising junior ace Oliver Tarvet advanced to Saturday’s semifinals on his home courts following a 6-2, 7-6 (7) triumph over Jay Friend, a 2024 Pac-12 champion with Arizona. Tarvet, the No. 8 seed, next meets No. 2 seed Strong Kirchheimer, who eliminated former Santa Barbara resident Collin Altamirano, 6-0, 6-4.

Tarvet, from England, was the West Coast Conference’s 2023 Freshman of the Year before rising to become the WCC’s 2024 Player of the Year.

Tarvet, 20, became the first USD player to be named an NCAA All-American since August Holmgren in 2022, and has previously won two ITF $15,000 men’s singles crowns. Tarvet is bidding to join Holmgren as the only Toreros to win SoCal Pro Series titles (Holmgren won the series’ inaugural event in 2022).

Third-seeded Alafia Ayeni (No. 519 ATP ranking), of San Diego, concluded his stay on the SoCal Pro Series Friday with a 6-7 (5), 5-7 quarterfinal defeat to University of Michigan product Patrick Maloney. 

San Diego’s Haley Giavara (No. 436 WTA singles ranking; No. 240 doubles ranking) had this week’s SoCal Pro Series run come to an end in singles and doubles on Friday. She entered this week’s SoCal Pro Series event as the No. 2 seed in singles and dropped her quarterfinal to Daavettila, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 0-6.

Sisters Carolyn and Anna Campana, graduate student athletes at Pepperdine the past two years, stopped Giavara and her partner, Fiona Crawley, 6-1, 6-3, in the women’s doubles semifinals. The Campanas meet Turkey’s Basak Eraydin and Ukraine’s Anita Sahdieva in the championship match at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Giavara, 23, is trying to build her schedule around the Challenger Tour, going forward but she considers the SoCal Pro Series a special opportunity to come home while continuing to play on the ITF World Tour.

“I love any chance there is to play in SoCal. There’s nothing like it,” Giavara said. “It’s always nice to play the hometown ones. Cooking at home, eating at home, sleeping in my own bed. It helps a lot. It’s (SoCal Pro Series) just added tons of confidence. It’s really hard when you go up in level.”

Johannes Seeman, who just finished his senior season at San Diego State, and Wally Thayne, a Newbury Park native who wrapped up his junior season at BYU, advanced to Saturday’s men’s doubles final with a 4-6, 6-3, 10-4 (third-set, 10-point tiebreaker) win over second-seeded Brits Adam Jones and Matthew Summers.

Thayne is seeking his first professional ITF title while Seeman won his only ITF doubles title in his native Estonia in 2020. The duo will face Arizona State product Nathan Ponwith and James Tracy.

Tennis fans are encouraged to attend SoCal Pro Series events (free admission) and get a sneak peek of Southern California’s elite junior and collegiate talent before they potentially jump on the fast track toward future stardom on the ATP and WTA Tours.

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