TUCSON, Ariz. - Arizona Men's Tennis' Colton Smith has been named the Universal Tennis Foundation's 2025 Hurd Award Champion, it was announced Sunday morning. 

Introduced by Mark Hurd in 2017, the UTR Foundation Hurd Award is a pair of two $100,000 grants given out to one male and one female American tennis player annually. Hurd launched the awards in an effort to support young-adult tennis players in their transition from college tennis to the world stage of professional tennis. 

Smith has recently reached new heights in his professional career, winning his first-ever ATP Challenger title in February, and making his ATP Tour Main Draw debut last week at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells where he qualified by defeating Flavio Cobolli. The 22-year-old college senior has a current UTR rating of 14.73 and is No. 261 in the ATP world rankings, climbing his way from outside his position outside the top 1600 last summer. 

Arizona head coach Clancy Shields describes the accomplishment as one of the "truly cool" moments he's experienced in his coaching profession. "As coaches we always want to provide opportunities for our players to continue in their journey and to achieve their goals of playing professionally. This award will open up many doors and opportunities for Colton as he takes that next step. We are both incredible proud of Colton, and grateful to the UTR foundation and the Hurd Family for this great honor. I know he will represent this award to the best of his ability and be a role model for American tennis in the years to come!"

Of the honor, Smith expresses "It means the world to be recognized for such an incredible award and to have the financial help going forward is going to take so much of the stress off of me and my family. I'm also super grateful for the opportunity to add another group of incredibly supportive and helpful people to my team through this award and I'm just super excited to see where this all will take me."