LAKEWOOD, June 8, 2026 (by Steve Pratt)
Perhaps inspired by watching fellow 19-year-old Mirra Andreeva win her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros on Saturday, UCLA’s Mayu Crossley also took home a pro tournament title Sunday, winning Week 2 of the Lakewood SoCal Pro Series.
The No. 2 seeded Crossley, from Tokyo, Japan, beat two-time junior Grand Slam champion Kristina Penickova, the No. 8 seed 16-year-old from Campbell, California, 6-4, 6-3, for her second career ITF $15,000 pro singles title in the USTA Southern California hosted event played at the Lakewood Tennis Center.
“I definitely remember playing Mirra and was so impressed by how she played,” said Crossley, of the 2022 second-round meeting at the J300 ITF junior tourney in College Park, Md., which Andreeva won, 6-4, 6-1. “I had no idea who she was.”
Crossley, who was 1-3 in ITF World Tennis Tour finals before Sunday having won her first W15 in Orlando 13 months ago, said seeing her junior rivals like Andreeva and Torrance 18-year-old Iva Jovic, who is ranked No. 17 in the world, do so well in the Grand Slams gives her confidence she too might be able to achieve the same success.
“It’s really inspiring me a lot,” said Crossley, a former top 10 junior in the world. “Especially seeing what Iva has done. We all grew up together so it’s great to see them be successful and doing so good.”
With her last final exam in economics at UCLA on Tuesday looming, Crossley kept her focus long enough to beat Penickova, who was playing in her first tournament since a wrist injury sidelined her since last November.
“I am a little bit stressed out about my final,” Crossley admitted. “I had a pretty rough last week (losing in the semifinals), and I felt like I wasn’t playing well. I had more confidence this week and was happy with the way I played.”
Crossley plans to return to Japan after her final and after a few weeks off will head to her training base at Evert Academy in Florida before returning to Westwood for her sophomore season at the end of September.
Penickova, who finished 2025 as the No. 1 ITF junior in the world and won both the Australian Open and Wimbledon junior titles, said she was “super excited to be playing again” and will stay in SoCal and play Week 3 on the SoCal Pro Series at the Kramer Club in Rolling Hills.
Two Olivers, both former ITF top 10 juniors and who now play for powerhouse Texas colleges, battled it out in the men’s singles final as 18-year-old unseeded Oliver Bonding (Texas Christian University) from London outlasted qualifier Oliver Ojakaar (Texas), 7-5, 7-6 (1) in a rematch of an important dual match just three weeks ago. In that match, Ojakaar beat Bonding, 6-1, 6-3 at the No. 4 line leading the Longhorns into the NCAA Championships where they lost to Virginia, 4-3.
Sunday’s match was the 12th in the past 14 days in Lakewood for Ojakaar (pronounced OH-juh-car), who also had to qualify last week. “I haven’t had too much time off since January,” said Ojakaar, who clawed back from down 1-5 to equal the match before running out of gas in the tiebreaker. “I had known him from the juniors so I knew I had a chance and our level is 50-50.”
Estonia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, is a Baltic nation with a population of around 1.2 million, roughly the size of Ventura County. Two women’s players have put Estonia on the map the past few years – Anett Kontaveit, a former world No. 2, and Kaia Kanepi achieving a career-high ranking of No. 15 in 2012.
Both finalists have experience in the Grand Slams with Ojakaar winning the 2023 U.S. Open juniors doubles title and Bonding making it to the Wimbledon doubles final and the semis at the Aussie and French Open all with SoCal’s Jagger Leach, who originally committed to be a college teammate at TCU with Bonding before changing his mind and deciding to go to Stanford.
Not that Leach needed a tour guide with his mother Lindsay Davenport having won the 1999 singles and doubles titles at the All-England Club, but Bonding did offer as he grew up attending the King’s College School in the village of Wimbledon.
“It was great running around the grounds and trying to find courts to play on as a kid and getting to play on Court 1 in that Wimbledon final,” said Bonding, who will also play Kramer Club next week. “I was lucky enough to be at the 2019 final where [Novak] Djokovic saved two match points to beat [Roger] Federer.”
Bonding won his first professional singles title at age 17, capturing the M15 in Lannion title in France in February of 2025.
In the doubles final both the men and women went the distance as the Canadian team of Mikael Arsenault and Volodymyr Gurenko edged out New Zealand’s Reece Falck (UNC-Wilmington) and Matthew Shearer (Nebraska), 6-3, 5-7, 10-8. In the women’s final, top-seeded Ava Hrastar and Victoria Mulville beat Kailey Evans (University of San Diego) and Lily Taylor, 6-3, 2-6, 11-9.
To learn more about the SoCal Pro Series, go to socalproseries.com.
