In a tournament populated by some of the top players on the West Coast Pepperdine’s men’s tennis team certainly stood out at the 53rd Southern California Intercollegiate Championships Nov. 4 through 8.
Senior Bassam Beidas tore through the first two rounds en route to winning the main draw singles title.
“I felt like I was attacking more than I have been in recent months Beidas said. We have been working hard on being aggressive in practice and I finally forced myself to do it in a tournament and it paid off.”
Sophomore Daniel Moss knocked off his opponent in the round of 32 but couldn’t quite sneak past the round of 16 losing 7-6 5-6 6-0 to USC’s Daniel Nguyen.
Beidas got revenge in the finals beating Nguyen 6-2 6-7 6-3 to capture the championship.
“When I was up 6-2 5-2 I started thinking ‘this is for what you did to Danny [Moss]'” Beidas said.
The surprise of the tournament came from Waves freshman Sebastian Fanselow who played well beyond his years defeating Shimpei Suzuki (UCI) 6-3 6-2 to win the main draw consolation final.
On the doubles side Pepperdine’s duo of juniors Stuart Keplar and Alejandro Moreno upended Jeff Gast and Evan Lee of UCLA 8-4 to advance to the quarterfinals.
Pepperdine entered the tournament alongside the likes of USC and UCLA two of the top teams in the nation. Despite plenty of star power around them the Waves played to their abilities.
“I felt that anyone in the tournament was beatable if I played well so I just took it a match at a time trying not to look ahead Beidas said. I just wanted to play well rather than look for the results because if I played well the results would come by themselves.”
The Waves resume competition on Jan. 15 through 172010 at the Sherwood Invitational in Sherwood Calif.
