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Taylor Fritz and Brandon Nakashima of Team World talk strategy during a doubles practice session ahead of Laver Cup 2026.<\/p>\nCalifornia was once the epicenter of American tennis.<\/p>\n
International Tennis Hall of Famer Maurice McLoughlin was known as the California Comet.<\/p>\n
Billie Jean King first picked up a racquet in her hometown of Long Beach. Pancho Gonzalez fell in love with the game on the public courts of Exposition Park in L.A. Venus and Serena Williams came straight out of Compton. Don Budge, Helen Wills, Jack Kramer, Alice Marble, Rosie Casals, Tracy Austin, Pete Sampras, Little Bill Johnston, Lindsay Davenport, Brad Gilbert? Yeah, they all came of age in the Golden State, too.<\/p>\n
But as state-hosted tournaments began to evaporate (storied events in Los Angeles, San Jose, Stanford, Carlsbad and elsewhere disappeared) amidst the globalization of the sport, the California talent pipeline seemed to slow, too.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s been a resurgence of late. Just check the Team World roster at Laver Cup 2026. Three of Captain Andre Agassi\u2019s players hail from Southern California alone: Taylor Fritz, Brandon Nakashima and Learner Tien.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think growing up, everyone always kind of knew Southern California and maybe Florida were probably the two best tennis communities, at least in my generation,\u201d said Fritz, 28, who hails from the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrandon and I, we\u2019re not just from the same state, but the same city. I knew Learner, as well, coming up in California. I\u2019ve trained with Learner since he was 15 years old, so it\u2019s cool to be on the same team. We\u2019ve got Alex Michelsen and Zachary Svajda, too. There\u2019s a lot of guys coming out of SoCal now, and it makes sense.\u201d Taylor Fritz<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old Nakashima was born in San Diego, the same city in which he captured his first tour-level title.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see. I\u2019ve always felt that Southern California has a bunch of very high-level junior players coming up and the competition level is always really high,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really nice to see all three of us representing that part of the United States. I always enjoy going back there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTaylor was always a little bit older than me, so in the juniors, we didn\u2019t really play or practice that much. Learner is a lot younger than me,\u201d he added. \u201cBut we see each other on the tour all the all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tien, whose parents, Khuong and\u00a0Huyen, came to the U.S. as refugees in the 1970s in the wake of the Vietnam War, was introduced to tennis on the community courts of Irvine.<\/p>\n
Taylor Fritz and Brandon Nakashima of Team World talk strategy during a doubles practice session ahead of Laver Cup 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always see the names of guys, formerly and presently, that come from California,\u201d said Tien, 20. \u201cIt\u2019s always cool to see and to be a part of it. They\u2019re familiar faces that I practice with and see a lot during the year. It\u2019s really cool that we\u2019re all here together. I always knew about Taylor and Brandon just living in California, hearing about them a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The world No. 10 Fritz is playing in his sixth Laver Cup, and was part of all three Team World wins (2022-23, 2025), including in London four years ago. Last year in San Francisco, he beat top-ranked Carlos Alcaraz for the biggest win of his career, and No. 3 Alexander Zverev in the 12th and deciding match, becoming the first American man to earn two Top-3 wins in one event since Andy Roddick in 2008 (Dubai).<\/p>\n
Both Nakashima and Tien will be making their Laver Cup debuts at The O2.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a real honor to play this event,\u201d said Nakashima, whose hot summer included an ATP Masters 1000 semi and final in Cincinnati and Montreal. \u201cAll the top players in the world have played it and are here also this year, so it\u2019s great to be part of the group. I\u2019m just super excited about that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California was once the epicenter of American tennis. International Tennis Hall of Famer Maurice McLoughlin was known as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[29090,34800,99,2072,428],"class_list":["post-860429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-brandon-nakashima","tag-learner-tien","tag-sports","tag-taylor-fritz","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}