Far away from the comfortable confines of the clay courts he trains on, Tristan Boyer was victorious in his first match of 2025 as the Altadena 23-year-old opened with a convincing win in the first round of the singles qualifying at the Australian Open in Melbourne.

Boyer received a favorable first-round match as he dispatched Japanese wild card Rei Sakamoto on Tuesday, 6-0, 6-2. The 18-year-old Sakamoto was coming off his first ATP Challenger Tour title and is currently ranked No. 413 in the world. Sakamoto won last year’s Australian Open boys’ singles title. Boyer next faces Chile’s Marcelo Tomas Barrios Vera with two more wins needed to secure his first main-draw spot at a Grand Slam.

Here is a quick look at some of the first-round Aussie Open qualifying results and what is next up for Southern California’s young pros:

No. 16 Learner Tien beat France’s Gregoire Barrere, 6-1 in three sets after dropping the first; Next faces Juan Pablo Ficovich of Argentina.

Zach Svjada (El Segundo) ousted France’s Enzo Couacaud in straight sets; Next faces Poland’s Kamil Majchrzak.

Brandon Holt (Rolling Hills Estates) took out Italy’s Gianluca Mager in straight sets. He next faces No. 25 Mackie McDonald (UCLA), who beat Aussie Alex Bolt dropping just four games.

Emilio Nava (Woodland Hills) lost to Chile’s Marcelo Tomas Barrios Vera in two tiebreakers.

Former University of San Diego star August Holmgren advanced with a third-set tiebreaker win and takes on Slovak Jozef Kovalík next. Pepperdine sophomore Edward Winter, from Australia, fell to Spain’s Carlos Taberner in two sets.

Ranked No. 133 in the world, Boyer spent a few days at home around the Christmas holiday and trained in Carson, according to his father Chris Boyer.

Boyer won three ATP Challengers all on clay in 2024 and, after recovering from a bone edema injury in his left foot suffered while playing at Stanford at the end of 2021, he played just one match in all of 2022.

“I think one of the keys that I’m extremely grateful for is that I was healthy all year. That was really, really key,” Boyer told ATP.com. “That was one of the goals we had at the beginning of the year, playing the whole season and not having to skip any tournaments for injuries.”

Boyer has seen his ranking go from around No. 1500 to a career high of No. 130 in just 22 months, according to his father Chris.

“I’m actually really proud of him that he came back when he could have easily just given up and quit and I wouldn’t have blamed him,” Chris Boyer said. “But he stuck with it trained really hard and worked with a great group of trainers.”

Boyer also won Challengers in Brazil and Mexico and set an ATP record-tying 44 Challenger wins in 2024. He is among a handful of SoCal players who had very successful ends to the 2024 season.

Tien beat friend and SoCal neighbor Alex Michelsen of Aliso Viejo to make the final at the Next Gen ATP event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as the 2024 concluded in December. The 19-year-old Tien concluded his stellar year falling to Brazil’s Joao Fonseca in the final. A week later at the Hong Kong Open, Tien lost to former world No. 8 Cam Norrie.

“I really played a high level and so did he,” Norrie praised Tien in his on-court interview. “He won a lot of matches in 2024, and he played really well at Next Gen. I know he’s an up-and-coming player, he hits the ball flat and he’s very calm. I was really impressed with his attitude on the court…Nothing but respect for Learner, he’s going to be a great player.”

SoCal’s men’s pro favorites in the main draw who will be vying for Grand Slam glory as the Big Four era has shrunken to just one include No. 4 Taylor Fritz, the US Open finalist trying to become the first American male since 2003 to win a Grand Slam. On Sunday, Fritz led Team USA to victory in the United Cup in Sydney with a win over Poland as 18 nations competed in the $10 million event.

The other Southern Californians in the Aussie Open main draw include Brandon Nakashima (No. 38), Michelsen (No. 41), Marcos Giron (No. 46) and former USC star Yannick Hanfmann (No. 96) representing Germany.

On the women’s side, all eyes will be on 17-year-old wild card Iva Jovic of Torrance in the main draw. In qualifying Thousand Oaks’ Claire Liu lost to Germany’s Ella Seidel while former UCLA All-American Ena Shibahara, representing Japan, was eliminated by No. 28 Darya Astakhova, from Russia, in three sets. Fontana’s Hanna Chang also lost in the first round.

In other news, the USTA announced that Davis Cup Captain Bob Bryan (Camarillo) will lead the U.S. team in a Davis Cup Qualifying match at the end of the month. In the first round the U.S. will face Chinese Taipei and the squad includes Michelsen and former UCLA teammates Giron and McDonald. The matches will take place Jan. 31-Feb. 1 on indoor hard court at the Taipei Tennis Center in Taipei City.