LA JOLLA, Calif.  ? The UC San Diego men's tennis team won its first match of the 2009 season with a 5-3 win over Hope International.  HIU won the NCCAA National title last year.  The Tritons won two doubles matches and three singles matches to earn the win.  Armaun Emami and Chapman Chan won at No. 1 doubles while teammates Kazumi Negishi and Erik Elliott also earned a doubles win.  In singles action, Chan, Samuel Ling and Jake Fellow all earned points for UCSD.  UCSD is back in action on Saturday with a match up against Azusa Pacific at 10:00 a.m. on the La Jolla campus.

In doubles action, Emami and Chan won at No. 1 doubles by an 8-6 score.  At the No. 2 doubles position, Negishi and Elliott defeated Anton Smirnov and Sebastian Bunescu 8-2.  HIU won the No. 3 doubles match 8-1 against William McCall and Ramesh Thondapu.

In singles action, Hope's Rajko Mladenovic defeated Negishi by scores of 6-4, 6-3.  At No. 2 singles, Chan defeated Anton Smirnov 1-0, retired.  At No. 3 singles, Vincent Nguyen and Henning Thrien did not finish, while the No. 4 singles match went to Johan Weich of Hope over UCSD's Naveen Dixit 6-4, 6-4.

The Tritons would go on to win at the No. 5 singles spot where Ling defeated Dominic Tinadi 6-2, 7-5 and Fellow defeated Sebastian Bunescu at No. 6 singles by a 6-2, 6-3 score.