Rohan Murali, Keegan Smith to Feature in an
All-San Diego Semifinal at the SoCal Pro Series

USD’s Savriyan Danilov, Norwalk resident Mao Mushika Advance to Singles Semis; San Diegan Haley Giavara to Oppose USC’s Lily Fairclough in Saturday’s Women’s Doubles Final

Rohan Murali won’t commit to playing beyond this opening week on the 2025 SoCal Pro Series. As a Harvard University student, tennis can be a significant part of your life, but it can’t be all-consuming. Especially when your career prospects are high off the court and you’ve lined up a summer research project in the biotech-sphere.

Perhaps the last few days at the San Diego resident’s home tennis venue, Barnes Tennis Center, may somewhat alter his summer sphere of influence.

Murali, the CIF-San Diego Player of the Year and Santana High School salutatorian in 2023, advanced to his first pro singles semifinal upon defeating five-time SoCal Pro Series doubles champion Nathan Ponwith in a Friday men’s singles quarterfinal after Ponwith retired with an injury in the third set with Murali leading 4-6, 6-3. 4-1.

It sets up an all-San Diego matchup in Saturday’s second (afternoon) semifinal between the diminutive and slender, but speedy, baseliner Murali and the hulking 6-foot-7 Keegan Smith (Point Loma High graduate) in the SoCal Pro Series’ first of seven consecutive $15,000-purse Futures tournaments on the USTA Pro Circuit and International Tennis Federation (ITF) World Tennis Tour.

Smith (No. 533 ATP ranking), 26, breezed to a 6-3, 6-2 quarterfinal triumph over Zeke Clark. The UCLA product and 2019 NCAA Division I doubles champion has not dropped a set (and has only lost more than three games in one set) through the first three rounds.

Murali (No. 1,372 ATP ranking), 20, just completed his sophomore year with Harvard’s tennis team and is in his third year competing on the SoCal Pro Series. In four previous main draw starts on the circuit, he lost his first-round match three times. His only previous ITF singles quarterfinal appearance came in June 2023 at Barnes Tennis Center, where he gained his first ATP ranking points with two wins before losing a three-setter to eventual champion Lorenzo Claverie.

On the top half of the men’s singles draw, University of San Diego graduate student Savriyan Danilov, a 24-year-old from Russia, followed up Thursday’s second-round ouster of the tournament’s top seed, 2023 SoCal Pro Series-Lakewood singles champion Andre Ilagan, with a quarterfinal victory (via injury retirement) over Brazilian qualifier and UC Santa Barbara junior Lucca Liu.

Danilov, who just completed his final two years of college tennis eligibility with the Toreros, was leading 2-6, 6-3, 3-2 when the match abruptly ended. A one-time ITF Futures winner in singles (2019) and doubles (2022) from when he was living in Moscow, Danilov faces Canadian qualifier and University of Kentucky junior Jaden Weekes in Saturday’s first semifinal, at 10 a.m.

In the women’s singles draw, South Pasadena resident and UCLA freshman Olivia Center, 19, and North Carolina-bound graduating high school senior Claire Hill, 18, earned their first WTA ranking points this week and faced off for a semifinal berth. Hill, a Cary, NC resident, rallied for a 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 win and will meet England’s Katie Swan, a past resident of Wichita, KS, on Saturday.

Center, who played in the 2023 U.S. Open women’s doubles main draw and the 2024-25 NCAA Division I women’s doubles final with Bruins teammate Kate Fakih, will return to UCLA to finish up the academic year and is not likely to rejoin the SoCal Pro Series in San Diego over the next three weeks.

No. 7 seed Mao Mushika – a Norwalk resident from Japan who was awarded 2024-25 NCAA All-American status in doubles as a Cal-Berkeley sophomore – rallied for a 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 victory over Polish No. 4 seed Stefania Rogozinska-Dzik, who recently completed her collegiate tennis career at Loyola Marymount University.

Mushika, who owns a Futures singles title in New Zealand and three doubles titles in Japan over the past two years, matches up against Serbia’s top-seeded Dejana Radanovic (No. 516 WTA ranking) in the other women’s singles semifinal. Radanovic coasted to a 6-0, 6-2 over Duke University-bound Claire An, a junior player from New York who gained her first WTA world ranking point two weeks ago in Orlando, Fla.

Saturday’s women’s singles semifinals will begin simultaneously at 10 a.m.

Saturday’s women’s doubles final (following the Swan-Hill semifinal) features nine-time ITF doubles champ Haley Giavara (WTA doubles ranking No. 209), a San Diego native and Cal graduate, and Ukrainian partner Anita Sahdiieva (LSU, Baylor University) opposite Australians Lily Fairclough and Lily Taylor.

In Friday’s semifinals, No. 1 seed Giavara-Sahdieva downed sisters Brandelyn and Lauren Fulgenzi, 6-1, 6-2, and USC sophomore Fairclough (three ITF Futures doubles titles in 2023) and Taylor dispatched Samantha Alicea and Anita Tu, 6-3, 6-3.

Saturday’s men’s doubles final pits top-seeded Englishman Finn Bass (a 2021 NCAA Division I dual team runner-up with Baylor) and Matt Hulme, of Australia – 5-7, 6-2, 10-7 (10-point, third-set tiebreaker) winners over fourth-seeded Americans and former University of Illinois teammates Alex Brown and Clark – against the unseeded Mexican team of Daniel Moreno and Manuel Sanchez.

Moreno and Sanchez edged second-seeded Andrew Fenty and Brandon Perez, 5-7, 7-5, 10-5, and will have eliminated the top three seeds if they win their first SoCal Pro Series doubles championship.

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