Men's Tennis | 3/10/2015 2:07:00 PM
ABILENE - Former Abilene Christian tennis All-America Hans Hach celebrated winning his first ITF Futures singles title earlier this week after defeating five opponents at the Nicaraguan Open in Managua.
Hach began his run through the singles bracket with a 6-1, 6-2 win over 19-year-old Brazilian Yuri Andrade and followed with an exceptionally close 6-7 (3), 7-6 (3), 6-2 decision over Columbia's Felipe Mantilla.
The victory over Mantilla advanced Hach into the quarterfinals, where he edged Brazilian Wilson Leite in straight sets, 7-6 (2), 6-4. And then in the semis, Hach gutted out a 6-2, 7-6 (1) triumph over Jorge Brian Panta of Peru.
Hach defeated Colombia's Juan Sebastian Gomez in the finals, 6-4, 6-3. Gomez came in as a three-time singles runner-up on the ITF Futures Tour and earlier in his career he was a 2010 Gold Medalist at the Summer Youth Olympics.
In doubles action at the Nicaraguan Open, Hach came within a victory of winning his second title of the winter and sixth since joining the Futures Tour full-time in 2014.
Hach and partner Keith-Patrick Crowley of South Africa won their first three matches of the week, but were forced to settle for second place after falling 6-3, 6-3 to Gomez and Chile's Julio Peralta. Gomez has won six doubles titles since 2011.
Last week's singles championship and runner-up crown in doubles earned Hach the highest rankings of his career at No. 823 and 332, respectively. His singles record for the current year (which includes ATP and ITF Pro Circuit main draw decisions) is 9-3, while his mark in doubles is an impressive 15-4.
Last month Hach and partner Manuel Sanchez won the doubles championship at the Gatorade Open in Guatemala City, Guatemala, and the week prior to that event he and Luis Patino survived five rounds in advancing to the finals of the RBC Tennis Championships of Dallas.
Hach and Patino earned $3,600 in prize money and 60 ATP Points for reaching the finals, which they lost to Denys Molchanov and Andrey Rublev.
Molchanov played previously for the Ukraine Davis Cup team, while Rublev was the world No. 1 junior as recently as last summer. Rublev additionally won the 2014 French Open junior singles competition and captured bronze medal in singles and silver in doubles at the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing.
While in Dallas, Hach and Patino first had to win two matches within a qualifying draw to make it into the main draw. And it was there that they survived consecutive three-set matches vs. the all-Swedish team of Lucas Renard and Jacob Adaktusson, 4-6, 6-3, 12-10, and the duo of Temur Ismailov and Chuhan Wang, 4-6, 7-5, 10-8.
Once in the main draw, Hach and Patino posted a quarterfinal win was against Mardy Fish and Mark Knowles, 6-3, 7-5. As recently as 2011 Fish was the No. 1 American in the ATP rankings, reaching a career-high singles ranking of world No. 7 in August of that year.
Hach and Patino later scored a semifinal victory against Great Britain's Liam Broady and former UCLA Bruin and Russian-born Dennis Novikov, 7-6, 6-4.
Broady has a career high world ranking of No. 180, and is currently the British No. 4 behind Kyle Edmund, James Ward and Andy Murray.
