SAN DIEGO, June 16, 2025 (Press Release)

Prior to arriving to the University of San Diego for his men’s singles final, Trevor Svajda was feeling a different sense of urgency on Father’s Day Sunday. He had yet to secure a gift for his dad, Tom.

“We were supposed to go to the mall after (the match). I’m definitely getting him a little something,” Svajda said.

Turns out, the Pacific Beach resident might be off the hook. In front of his parents, Tom and Anita, his girlfriend and her family, Svajda won his first SoCal Pro Series title, 6-2, 6-3, over University of San Diego All-American Stian Klaassen in the $15,000-purse tournament final on the USTA Pro Circuit and ITF World Tennis Tour.

Moments after shaking the hands of Klaassen and the chair umpire at the match’s conclusion, Tom Svajda made his way down from his seat to meet his son behind the umpire’s chair. They exchanged a gentle embrace and, into his dad’s ear, Trevor whispered, “Happy Father’s Day.”

The gift search might have just taken care of itself right there.

Tom is the catalyst for establishing the Svajda family’s evolving legacy in tennis. The longtime tennis coach at the Pacific Beach Tennis Club who had introduced his sons, 22-year-old Zach Svajda (No. 229 ATP ranking) and 19-year-old Trevor (No. 737 ATP ranking), to the sport when they were both two years old by putting a racket in their hands and bringing them to the club.

It was just over a year ago, right before last year’s start to Wimbledon, that the Svajda family was made aware of Tom’s Stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis.

Though Trevor Svajda, SMU’s No. 1 player who just completed his sophomore season, won his maiden professional tennis title at a $25,000 Futures event in Calabasas in March 2024, Tom was on hand to watch Trevor win a pro championship for the first time because it occurred near home on the SoCal Pro Series.

“Not a better gift than that for my Dad. I’m happy I could do it with him around watching,” Trevor said. “It was definitely on my mind a little bit, but I try to, when I walk on the court, block everything out. You can’t think about those type of things. The last time he watched me was at the San Diego Challenger (ATP 100 event in February). He came out for both of my wins, so that was a special moment for me.

“Honestly, he said he wasn’t going to be able to make it out this week because of how he was feeling. Some days, he’s fine. He can teach lessons and go on walks. And some days he just can’t get out of bed. Every day is different. I know he was feeling awful today, but I’m so happy he could come out and watch me, support me. This is definitely one of my biggest achievements. I won Calabasas and I won (today). These are my first two pro titles so these ones are never ones that I’ll forget.”

A GoFundMe campaign, in which proceeds raised are wholly directed towards Tom Svajda’s ongoing medical treatment, has nearly reached two-thirds of the initial $150,000 fundraising goal.

In December, San Diego County’s resident ATP Tour stars of past and present, James Blake and Brandon Nakashima, joined Zach and Trevor Svajda to play in a special tennis exhibition at Rancho Santa Fe Tennis Club as a means of additional fundraising support for Tom.

“We’re just praying that he’ll get better,” Trevor Svajda said. “He just wants us (Zach and I) to keep playing. It makes him so much happier when we’re out there winning.”

This week may wind up being Svajda’s only appearance on the 2025 SoCal Pro Series. He intended to play next week at Rancho Santa Fe Tennis Club until he and his SMU teammate, Louis Cloud, were named by the USTA as an alternate doubles team to replace Tennessee’s Alex Kotzen and Alejandro Moreno at the inaugural US Open Wild Card Playoffs at the USTA National Training Center in Orlando, Fla. He took a redeye to Orlando on Sunday night, although he is considering playing one more SoCal Pro Series event in Lakewood, which begins in a week.

One of four NCAA Division I tandems competing in the doubles draw, Svajda and Cloud play Duke’s Cooper Williams and Theo Winegar in what amounts to a semifinal match on Tuesday, with the winning team playing in a final on Wednesday. The doubles champion will earn a 2025 US Open main draw wild card while the doubles runner-up will earn a wild card into US Open qualifying.

Svajda collected 15 ATP singles ranking points and a $2,160 winner’s prize. Klaassen received eight ATP ranking points and a $1,272 check as runner-up.

Klaassen, who hails from The Netherlands and lives there with his family in between school years, flies to Amsterdam on Monday for a summer break at home before returning to San Diego in August in advance of his senior year with the Toreros.

He heads home reinvigorated with confidence after advancing to his first professional ITF singles final – Klaassen had never previously advanced beyond the second round in six previous Futures tournament main draws – and winning his first pro doubles title with USD teammate Savriyan Danilov on Saturday.

Earlier on Saturday, the Toreros teammates, and roommates, battled it out from qualifying into a singles semifinal, which Klaassen won, 7-5, 4-6, 7-5.

“I saw him, he came out for breakfast, and I just looked at him and we started smiling at each other. It was an interesting feeling. We’d never played each other,” Klaassen said of his first encounter Danilov at their shared home prior to their Saturday singles semifinal. “There was not really tension. The battle I had with Savi was exactly what I would have expected. It could have gone either way. Three-and-a-half-hour match.”

Klaassen acknowledged his overall tournament performance in singles and doubles ranks “by far, No. 1” among his tennis achievements to date.

“Result-wise, of course, but also development-wise. To see what works and what doesn’t work on the pro tour, because I do think there’s a difference between college tennis and the pro tour, the ITF Tour,” Klaassen added. “Trevor played well. Played smart. I didn’t have an answer. I was kind of a bit clueless.

“This week was a very good learning moment, to see how I have success on the ITF Tour. Not having made it past the second round, it was always kind of like, ‘Am I at the semifinal level of a 15K? Can I compete with these guys?’ I know sometimes you need one or two wins to get you past that little hump and I think this week was, for sure, that moment for me. Very happy with the week.”

In the women’s singles final, San Diegan Alyssa Ahn was competitive in her first professional final but the Stanford-bound No. 6 seed who graduated from Torrey Pines High School on May 30 fell, 7-5, 6-3, to seventh-seeded Mao Mushika, of Japan.

Ahn, 18, went one step further this week than in last year’s SoCal Pro Series appearance on these University of San Diego courts – the only other time she had reached weekend play on the ITF women’s circuit.

It is representative of the incremental progress she has made through the life of the SoCal Pro Series. She is the only female member of the high school class of 2025 to have played the SoCal Pro Series in each of her four high school years, beginning with the circuit’s inaugural tournament at the tail end of her freshman year in 2022.

“I feel like I’ve been really lucky to kind of grow up in a time where there’s these opportunities like this right in my backyard,” Ahn said. “I’m really grateful to the USTA (Southern California) and all the sponsors for putting these on because it’s been super instrumental for my development and just for my tennis. I’ve really enjoyed the women’s ITF route.

“It’s been super helpful just, first, to get help with some wild cards in the beginning. Then as I started building points and winning matches, it’s been awesome to see my ranking slowly go up and give me chances into higher-level tournaments. I got super lucky with the timing of it, and the location as well, just getting these opportunities to progress my ranking and my game.”

Not to be deterred from Sunday’s result, Ahn said she plans to continue along the SoCal Pro Series in Rancho Santa Fe and Lakewood the next two weeks, and also when the circuit concludes at San Diego State from July 7-13.

Said Ahn: “As soon as I graduated, I wanted to get back and play a lot of tournaments. It’s been really great to get a lot of matches in, and a lot of high-level matches. It’s been great for my confidence moving forward. Pretty happy with my game right now.”

Mushika, 19, will conclude her four-week maiden voyage through the SoCal Pro Series next week in Rancho Santa Fe. Mushika and her twin sister, Mio, had a plan to spend time with their older sister, Chiho, who lives in La Jolla, and also found it convenient to play the entire San Diego swing of the SoCal Pro Series.

Mao Mushika, soon to be a junior at UC Berkeley, advanced to weekend play in each of the first three weeks of this circuit. She came up short the first two weeks in the singles semifinals before breaking through with her second Futures singles crown on Sunday.

“It’s really nice to win the second one. This is very big,” Mao Mushika said. “I was already tired the beginning of this week, but I was like, ‘I need to win one of the weeks.’ ”

Mushika (No. 885 WTA ranking) gained 15 WTA singles world ranking points and a $2,352 prize, while Ahn (No. 918 WTA ranking) received 10 WTA world ranking points and a $1,470 runner-up share.

Lily Fairclough, who just completed her sophomore season at USC, and fellow Australian Lily Taylor gained their first SoCal Pro Series doubles title together two weeks after finishing runner-up in the circuit’s 2025 opening event with a 2-6, 6-2, 10-4 (10-point, third-set tiebreaker) win over Ukrainian Anita Sahdiieva and University of San Diego junior and Panorama City resident Kristina Nordikyan.

The Aussies tallied 15 WTA doubles ranking points each and split a $955 winner’s check. Sahdiieva and Nordikyan received 10 WTA doubles ranking points each and split a $515 runner-up prize.

Match of the Week

Men’s Doubles Final – Stian Klaassen/Savriyan Danilov d. Keshav Chopra/Phillip Jordan, 6-4, 6-7 (7), 15-13

Hours after the USD Toreros faced each other in a grueling singles semifinal duel, Klaassen and Danilov united to win their first SoCal Pro Series doubles title. They saved two match points against in the second set and a few more in the decisive third-set tiebreaker in outlasting second-seeded Americans Keshav Chopra and Phillip Jordan. It was the second ITF doubles title for Moscow native Danilov and the first pro tennis title for his Dutch partner, Klaassen.

Said Klaassen: “It was wild. A lot of things happened. A lot of match points for us, and saved. It was like back and forth. A little bit of a choke here and there. Very emotional. Good that we could step back on court as teammates and friends.”

Klaassen and Danilov earned 15 ATP doubles ranking points each and split a $930 champion’s prize, while runners-up Jordan, a former UC Santa Barbara product, and Chopra collected eight ATP doubles ranking points each and split a $540 check.

Remaining 2025 SoCal Pro Series tournament schedule

• June 16-22 – Rancho Santa Fe Tennis Club, Rancho Santa Fe
• June 23-29 – Lakewood Tennis Center, Lakewood
• June 30-July 6 – Jack Kramer Club, Rolling Hills Estates
• July 7-13 – San Diego State University, San Diego