Long Beach native Asia Muhammad

Like the celebrated American Fed Cup champion CoCo Vandeweghe, Long Beach native Asia Muhammad comes from a sporting family. Her brother Shabazz is a first round NBA draft pick who plays in Minnesota, and her uncle Stephone Paige is a former NFL receiver. Now a decade into her professional career, Asia holds two WTA doubles titles and four ITF singles trophies. This week at Rancho Santa Fe for the , Muhammad has kicked into high gear with two convincing main draw victories over talented opponents.

This morning, the World #275 Muhammad edged fellow American Caroline Dolehide in three sets, 6-7, 6-3, 6-2, after dispatching #6 seed Su Jeong Jang of Korea in the opening round. Muhammad will now face American Victoria Duval (World #212) in the quarterfinals at Morgan Run.

#8 seed Kayla Day (Santa Barbara) was upset in her opening match against qualifier former Pepperdine star Lorraine Guillermo (Walnut, Calif.), 6-3, 7-6(5), while Robin Anderson (UCLA), Julia Boserup (Newport Beach), and Claire Liu (Thousand Oaks) also met early exits.

Don’t count out Danielle Lao (Arcadia), who defeated #5 Yanina Wickmayer (BEL) in straight sets. The former USC Trojan faces Bulgarian Elitsa Kostova in the second round. Kostova eliminated Pepperdine’s Ashley Lahey (Hawthorne) on Wednesday.

This afternoon, top doubles seeds Sabrina Santamaria (USC) & Kaitlyn Christian (Orange, Calif.) face DiLorenzo/McNally in tandem action. Interestingly, Christian acted as Emma Stone’s body double portraying Billie Jean King in last year’s feature film, Battle of the Sexes.