Lahaina, Maui >> Hyeon Chung never lost more than six games in a match on his way to Sunday’s final of the SportMaster Tennis Championships of Maui.
He lost six games in the opening set of the championship against Taro Daniel. Chung lost only one more, closing with a rush similar to the wind that buffeted the Royal Lahaina Tennis Ranch.
The 20-year-old South Korean ran away from Daniel, 7-6 (7-3), 6-1 to capture the $75,000 Challenger event. It was the first Challenger of the year for the USTA Pro Circuit, and the fifth straight year the tournament has been on Maui.
Chung will move into the top 100 in the world with his win. He collected $10,800 and 90 ranking points.
Daniel, who turned 24 Friday and is ranked 125th, celebrated with a $6,360 payday and 55 points. The Japan Davis Cupper speaks three languages, his Japanese followed closely by English — he was born in New York — and Spanish, because he trains in Valencia.
He lost just five points in the first three games Sunday, winning all the 20-something-stroke rallies the finalists got into. Chung finally got on the board in the fourth game, but it wasn’t until Daniel was up 5-2 that he actually felt pressured.
“He dominated so much this week,” Daniel said of Chung. “I thought I had him in the first set. Until 5-2, I was just doing everything perfectly. I was patient, going for the right balls. Then he got a little back into it.”
That was an understatement. Chung’s aggressive baseline game went from erratic and windblown to fairly flawless for the final 70 minutes of the 90-minute match.
He tied the opening set at 5, winning nine consecutive points at one stage. Daniel rallied to go up 6-5, but Chung won his serve easily and never trailed in the tiebreaker. The final four points were a microcosm of the match: A breathtaking winner, a great get that skidded off the tape and caused Daniel to net his volley, perfection in yet another monstrous rally and Daniel’s unforced error.
“It was windy and he played really hard, so it was tough,” said Chung, who took a set off Australian Open semifinalist Grigor Dmitrov in Melbourne. “It was tough to play in the wind. I tried to play my tennis and after I got that first game then I just tried to play hard and focus more on the really big points. And I got some luck here and there.”
He deserved it. Chung ultimately forced Daniel away from his comfort zone on the baseline and broke his confidence. By the end, Chung won nearly every long rally and turned into a terminator, or, as Daniel called him, “a missile.”
Both would like to come back to Maui, Chung for obvious reasons.
“Good result, food was perfect and all these players … perfect week,” grinned the 2015 ATP Most Improved Player. “After my match I go to the beach, next day the same. Win, go to the beach, it’s good for us.”
Daniel found his focus on Maui, a place he hadn’t been since he was a baby.
“I’ve been enjoying this place a lot,” he said. “The weather was great except for today. Life is so different here. It’s a different type of reality.”
Chung did not lose a set all week. He defeated Mackie McKenzie in the second round. McKenzie was coached early in his career by former Rainbow Wahine Rosie Bareis, now in the University of Hawaii Hall of Fame.
McKenzie turned pro last year after winning the NCAA singles and doubles titles for UCLA. He captured singles and doubles titles at a $25,000 Futures event earlier this month in Los Angeles.
Austin Krajicek and Jackson Withrow won an All-American doubles final, 6-4, 6-3, over Bradley Klahn and Tennys Sandgren. It was the third year in a row an American team captured the doubles championship.
Tennis notes
>> Royal Lahaina also will host the 2017 Fed Cup first-round match between the U.S. and Germany in two weeks (Feb. 11-12), and the state high school championships in May.
The Fed Cup teams will be named this week. This is the first time a Fed Cup tie has been played in the same state two years in a row. The Americans, with Venus Williams, beat Poland last February in Kona.
>> Christina McHale won last year’s women’s Challenger at Royal Lahaina. The event was not played this year because the USTA cut its Pro Circuit schedule from 94 events to 90.
>> Honolulu’s Shelby Baron will be honored as the state’s Professional Tennis Registry Member of the Year next month at the PTR International Tennis Symposium in South Carolina.
The award is presented to a PTR member who has “shown dedication and diligence in promoting and supporting tennis and PTR.” Baron competed in wheelchair tennis at last year’s Paralympics in Rio and is on the University of Alabama team.
