TENNIS

Top-seeded Palos Verdes Peninsula opens defense of its National High School Tennis All-American tournament title this morning against Millbrae Mills at Palisades Tennis Club in Newport Beach.

Peninsula, led by junior Rylan Rizza, the nation’s fifth-ranked boys’ 16s player, are also the defending Southern Section Division I champions.

The tournament’s college-style format figures to help Peninsula (3-0), which doesn’t field a team quite as deep as last year’s. The format allows teams to use their top six players in eight-game pro sets of singles and doubles. Rizza and Jeff Kazarian, the Panthers’ No. 2 singles player, won the Ojai doubles tournament last year, and Teige Sullivan won last year’s Southern Section doubles title with since-graduated Goh Futagaki.

If Peninsula beats Mills in its 10:30 a.m. match, it will probably meet defending Division II champion University (4-2) in a 1 p.m. match at Palisades. Second-seeded Atherton Menlo, led by James Pade, opens against La Jolla Country Day at 10 a.m. at Newport Beach Tennis Club.

Third-seeded Corona del Mar, the host school, plays Horace Mann of Riverdale, N.Y., at 10:30 at Palisades, and fourth-seeded Brentwood plays Christ Church Episcopal of Greenville, S.C., at 10 at Costa Mesa Tennis Center.

The championship semifinals will be Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at Corona del Mar High and Park Newport Apartments. The title match is scheduled for 5 p.m. Saturday at Palisades.