News & Features

by Colette Lewis, 30 May 2025

Special from Zoo Tennis

For most professional tennis players, commuting to work involves visas and frequent flyer miles, not daily traffic jams, as they globe-trot from tournament to tournament seeking precious ATP and WTA ranking points.

Thanks to the SoCal Pro Series, 19-year-old Learner Tien had a less grueling option as he began his climb to the ATP Top 100. His commute from his Irvine, California home during last year's seven-week stretch of $15,000 tournaments was confined to local venues he knew well.

"It's obviously ideal when you're able to sleep at home, drive to tournaments and come back at night," said Tien, who was 16 when he competed in the first Series in 2022, and won his first professional title in his hometown in 2023. "I think it's great that there were tournaments so close to where I live, places where I played junior tournaments before when I was young. Playing in familiar places where it's close to home, you know the area, you can drive, you don't have to fly. I think it's great."

Tien has former USTA Southern California section board member Chris Boyer to thank for those three summers' worth of opportunities, the last of which vaulted Tien into the spotlight as a promising Next Gen talent.

Boyer had seen a disturbing drop off in the number of USTA Pro Circuit events in California on the calendar, with the landscape after the pandemic especially dire. Dismayed by the lack of local tournaments where players like his son Tristan, a former Stanford standout, UCLA's Govind Nanda and USC's Stefan Dostanic could earn ATP points without extensive travel, Boyer began laying the groundwork for the SoCal Pro Series.

The United States Tennis Association encouraged Boyer, but did not provide the financial backing most USTA Pro Circuit events receive.

"They were hugely supportive," said Boyer, who rose to Vice President of the SCTA in his 10 years on the board. "Basically the gist of the deal was we would not take any grant funding from them and they would only supply some limited services, and in return, we would go out and run these tournaments on our own and be responsible for them as a section. We would go out and get the sites, we would get the tournament directors, we would make sure that everything was to the standards of the ITF Pro Circuit and pay for it."

That model required local donors and tournament directors who could secure sponsors, with the SCTA also playing a role in providing a financial backstop. As a result, the four wild cards, the majority of which the USTA controls in their grant-funded tournaments, would all belong to the Pro Series.

"SCTA team members, USTA coaches were on this committee, as well as a couple of our donors, and we went through the spreadsheets together. We did not have one argument," Boyer said. "We also require that every wild card be a US citizen, which is standard for the USTA anyway. And we require that every applicant be either a Southern California permanent resident or be attending a [Southern California] university or college, on the team and enrolled in that school during the time period that they're applying. So if you meet those criteria, you are eligible for a wild card."

Sixteen-year-old Julieta Pareja used her wild card last June to capture her first pro title at nearby Rancho Santa Fe and is already a WTA 250 semifinalist. Seventeen-year-old Iva Jovic, who made a Pro Series final as a 14-year-old wild card, picked up her third main draw win at a slam this week at Roland Garros.

Other SoCal Pro Series alumni include ATP No. 33 Alex Michelsen, No. 101 Brandon Holt and No. 106 Ethan Quinn, demonstrating that while the tournaments are open to anyone with the requisite ATP, WTA or ITF entry ranking, Southern California residents have taken full advantage of the opportunities in their home state.

Yet three years later, the template hasn't been employed by any other USTA section, which has Boyer looking to leverage the USTA's interest in expanding the Pro Circuit to help fill the gap he's identified.

"We only have 116 Pro Circuit tournaments in the United States right now," said Boyer, who is currently employed as a USTA consultant, studying the expansion of the Pro Circuit. "Italy actually has more than we do, and they are way smaller. Spain and France are very close, just under us. But Europe, in its entirety, has close to 750. Their population is roughly double ours, and we should have way, way more tournaments on a per population basis. We've done that analysis to determine if we indeed need to have more tournaments, and the answer is emphatically yes."

Boyer admits a few growing pains surfaced during the SoCal Pro Series' first year, with tournament directors who didn't measure up in their role as fundraisers replaced by those who were more ambitious. Boyer and the SCTA board also saw the need for what he dubbed a "mini circuit supervisor," a position now filled by longtime SoCal tournament director Cathy Jacobson-Guzy.

His advice to other sections looking at the Pro Series model?

"Take a close look at the finances," Boyer said. "Because I think it all begins and ends with business. If the economics work, then everybody's happy."

Tracy Davies, recently named General Manager of USA Tennis, a new position created by the USTA, sees the possibilities in using the SoCal Pro Series as a model for the rest of the country, integrating it into the broader landscape of the USTA Pro Circuit, which also includes ATP Challengers and WTA 125s.

"We've also been talking with the ITF, ATP and WTA about what that looks like for expansion over the next two to three years in the US," said Davies, who in her previous position at the USTA, has been working with Boyer on the topic since last summer.

"Are we able to expand in certain levels and if so, how do we do it?," Davies continued. "So we've been closely working with them the last six months to come up with a three-year plan, which we're very close on. That means we would regionalize more, more Circuits like in SoCal; we provide more events and we would provide more higher-level events, because that was also a gap we were missing. So we'll go back to leadership at the end of the year and give them our plan, hopefully move forward to get a better competitive landscape in the US."

Davies envisions a 20-to-30% increase in Pro Circuit tournaments, as part of a three-year proposal beginning in 2026, while giving priority to the longstanding events already on the calendar.

"That's the jigsaw puzzle of all this, right?," Davies said. "We do understand there are incredible tournament directors and communities that have run these for years and years and years that are really successful. So it's not as easy as, 'we're going to move these three here.' What Chris did in SoCal, getting seven in a row, is really not easy to do, particularly finding the right fit and making the facilities pass everything the ATP and ITF need."

Tien's coach Eric Diaz cites Tien's four SoCal Pro Series titles, part of his 28-match winning streak last summer, as instrumental in his recent rise, which culminated in a runner-up finish at the Next Gen ATP finals in December.

"I think being able to play those while at home, and build, and get as accustomed to winning as he did, I think that obviously played a huge role in him ending up having a hugely successful second half of the year last year," said Diaz, whose students at the Tier 1 Performance Academy often debut on the Pro Circuit in SoCal Pro Series qualifying. "I don't care what level it is, when you win 28 matches in a row, you feel good."

Tien, who knows he was fortunate to have the one existing circuit in his backyard, would welcome similar circuits in other parts of the country.

"Obviously coming into its fourth year speaks to how popular they are," Tien said. "I think it's really nice whenever there's a long span of events in a similar area, so you don't have to travel from state to state. The fact that it was close to me was even better. But honestly, if it was in a different place, like Florida for example, just the fact that it was in one location every single week for almost two months was great, and it was just perfect that I got to play close to home."

2025 SoCal Pro Series

May 26-June 1: Barnes Tennis Center (San Diego)

June 2-8: University of San Diego

June 9-15 University of San Diego

June 16-22: Rancho Santa Fe Tennis Club

June 23-29: Lakewood Tennis Center

July 7-13: San Diego State

June 30-July 6 at the Jack Kramer Club

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About Colette Lewis

Colette Lewis has covered topflight U.S. and international junior events as a freelance journalist for over a decade. Her work has appeared in Tennis magazine, the Tennis Championships magazine and the US Open program. Lewis is active on Twitter, and she writes a weekly column right here at TennisRecruiting.net. She was named Junior Tennis Champion for 2016 by Tennis Industry Magazine.

Lewis, based out of Kalamazoo, Michigan, has seen every National Championship final played since 1977, and her work on the tournament's ustaboys.com website led her to establish ZooTennis, where she comments on junior and college tennis daily.