No. 3 UCLA defeated No. 57 BYU 6–1 in men’s tennis Monday at the Los Angeles Tennis Center handing the Cougars their first loss of the season.
The win gives the Bruins (3–0) the chance to compete in the USTA/ITA National Team Indoors in Seattle in February.
The loss dropped the Cougars to 5–1 on the season.
Because of the heavy rain over the weekend, this match was postponed from Saturday evening until Monday evening.
The match opened up with the doubles point going down to the wire. UCLA’s Andrien Puget and Karue Sell started play by beating BYU’s freshman Andrey Goryachkov and senior Spencer Smith 8–1. The other two matches were much closer. BYU’s Patrick Kawka and Francis Sargeant defeated UCLA’s Marcos Giron and Dennis Novikov 8–7. UCLA picked up the doubles point in the last match when Alex Brigham and Dennis Mkrtchian beat Keaton Cullimore and John Pearce 8–7.
With the doubles point secured, UCLA took control of the singles play winning all but one match.
Kawka continued his undefeated season and picked up BYU’s lone point with a 6–3, 7–6 win over Novikov.
BYU returns to California to play Stanford on Friday before returning home to play Air Force on Saturday.
