Pepperdine Leads Tennis Qualifiers With 4

Sixteen players won preliminary matches Thursday at the Warner Center Club to advance to today’s 32-player main draw of the West Coast Fall Men’s tennis championships.

Four players from Pepperdine and three each from UC Irvine and USC won best-of-three matches. Two players from UCLA also won in Thursday matches.

Leading the onslaught of Waves into today’s round is Matt Holt, who defeated Jon Fox of UC Santa Barbara, 6-0, 7-6 (7-6); Ashley Naumann, who defeated David Johnson of California, 6-1, 6-0; Cary Lothringer, who defeated Chad Rosser of USC, 6-4, 6-3; and Ari Nathan, who defeated Jeff Miamoto of UC Irvine, 6-1, 6-3.

Other individual winners included Andras Lanyi, David Ekerot and Phil Whitesell of USC; Brett Stern and Marco Zuniga of UC Irvine; and Robbie Wendell and Bill Behrens of UCLA.

The main draw begins today at 8 a.m. with matches running until 7 p.m. The tournament will conclude with championship play on Sunday.