Top-Seeded Kaylan Bigun Joins Three Other Bruins
in SoCal Pro Series Lakewood Semifinals

Bigun & Former UCLA Teammate Spencer Johnson, As Well As Top Bruin Women’s Players Anne-Christine Lutkemeyer & Mayu Crossley Still Alive

Former UCLA standout Kaylan Bigun joined three other UCLA Bruins with victories on Friday at the SoCal Pro Series Lakewood ITF World Tour $15,000 event, the first of seven consecutive tournaments put on by the USTA Southern California section.

The former world No. 1 junior Bigun, who won the French Open Junior singles title in 2024, beat qualifier Oliver Ojakaar, 6-1, 7-6 (2), to advance to his third career ITF pro semifinal beating the senior from the University of Texas from Estonia.

“I was able to get through a tough match against a good opponent,” said Bigun, who dropped a total of five games in his first five sets played this week. “I think all these SoCal Pro Series matches are tough. You don’t get any easy matches, and I think regardless of the scorelines they are all going to be a battle.”

Fans at the Lakewood Tennis Center were definitely seeing Bruin blue and gold on Friday as Bigun’s former UCLA teammate unseeded Spencer Johnson from Ladera Heights also moved on to the final four with a 6-1, 7-6 (4) win over former Yale and UC-Berkeley player Theo Dean.

UCLA’s No. 1 and 2 players – Irvine’s No. 5 Anne-Christine Lutkemeyer and top-seeded Mayu Crossley from Tokyo, Japan – both advanced to the semifinals and with one more win each would face one another in what could be an All-UCLA final Sunday on the men’s and women’s side.

The 20-year-old Bigun from Westwood will face Ojakaar’s Longhorn teammate Lucas Marionneau from France in one semi at 10 a.m. while Johnson meets No. 4 Amit Vales from Israel at the same time. Marionneau beat the No. 8 seed former UC-Irvine standout Noah Zamora from San Diego, 7-6 (2), 6-2.

Just two weeks ago, Ojakaar played No. 4 singles and Marionneau No. 6 as Texas lost, 4-3, to Virginia in the NCAA Championships in Athens, Georgia. Interestingly, both Ojakaar and Marionneau figured into all three points earned by the Longhorns as they won separate doubles matches at No. 2 and 3 to clinch the doubles point and both won their singles.

In more than 60 ITF pro events, Bigun has yet to make a final. “It’s definitely something that I’m hungry to do,” he said. “I don’t want to treat it like tomorrow’s a semi and then Sunday’s a final. I just want to treat it like another match.”

And Bigun is well aware that if he and Johnson can pull off one more win each the two would meet in Sunday’s final. “We just practiced together all last week,” said Bigun, who helped the Bruins capture the Big Ten Conference title in 2025 his freshman year before he left school to turn pro. “Spencer’s a very good friend and a great teammate.”

Bigun said he’s been following the scores daily from the French Open, the spot of his biggest career win in Paris and has watched as former SoCal Pro Series players like Learner Tien, Alex Michelsen, Zach Svajda, and Iva Jovic advanced to the third round.

“I don’t like to dwell on it,” Bigun said of winning Roland Garros. “It just gives me confidence to know that if I put in the hard work it can lead to great achievements. The proof is in the pudding. If you do the right things, good things will happen.”

Bigun is one of only four American players to have won the French Open Junior singles title in the last 49 years as that list includes: John McEnroe (1977), Bjorn Fratangelo (2011), and Tommy Paul (2015).

Crossley will face unseeded Tatum Evans, a North Carolina senior from Virginia, in a 10 a.m. semifinal. Crossley beat former Maryland player Kallista Liu, representing Hong Kong and the qualifier Evans got past wild card Olivia Center, yet another UCLA Bruin who played Friday.

“I was really struggling in the fall adjusting to the college environment, but I think by the end I was playing well and I learned a lot from college tennis,” Crossley said.

In the other semifinal it will be 15-year-old qualifier Allison Wang from San Jose against Lutkemeyer, who needed three sets to eliminate No. 2 seeded Dasha Plekhanova from Canada, 6-7 (8), 6-1, 6-4

Marionneau and his Texas teammate Sebastian Gorzny will take on the No. 3 New Zealand team of Reece Falck (UNC-Wilmington) and Matthew Shearer (Nebraska) in the men’s doubles final not before 12 noon. In the women’s doubles final, former college players Jaeden Brown (Michigan) and Kailey Evans (USD) will take on Laguna Niguel’s Maxine Murphy and Spain’s Eva Alvarez Sande who both recently finished up as teammates at Washington State.

–

To learn more about the SoCal Pro Series, go to socalproseries.com.
Follow along on Instagram at instagram.com/socalproseries.
Like the Facebook page at facebook.com/socalproseries.