With the glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas Strip just 15 minutes from the Darling Tennis Center in Summerlin, Nev., UCLA-bound Kimmi Hance spent this past week as the top-seeded player at the ITF Level 4 Junior tennis tournament.
It wasn’t an easy road, but the 17-year-old Hance from Torrance advanced all the way to the final, where on Friday she fell short of a coveted ITF single title in a tough, 7-5, 6-3 defeat against Canada’s Victoria Mboko, the tournament No. 2-seeded player.
“She had a really hard serve which I had a hard time with,” said Hance, after just landing back in SoCal at LAX from Las Vegas. “She played really fast and with a lot of pace, which I wasn’t used to from my previous matches. She was just a little bit better today.”
It was a great lead-in tournament for Hance, who is ranked just outside the world Top 200 in the ITF rankings and who will be unseeded at the big ITF Grade 1 International Open of Southern California taking place at the Barnes Tennis Center in San Diego, which officially kicks off on Saturday with qualifying and main draw beginning on Monday. The following week, Hance will play the USTA Spring Nationals Easter Bowl.
“I thought I played pretty well with the circumstances of not having played a tournament in over a year,” said Hance, who took out Northern California’s Anya Murthy 6-4 in the third set in a close call second-round match. “I had to adjust to the altitude a little bit which I hadn’t done in a while and I got some good matches in. Overall, it was a really good week for me in Las Vegas.”
In the Boys’ 18s final in Las Vegas, former Fountain Valley resident Sebastian Gornzy, 17, came all the way through qualifying to make the final just like Hance, also coming up a little short on Friday. Gornzy fell to No. 2-seeded Giulio Perego of Italy in the final, 6-4, 6-4.
“Sebastian was really impressive all week,” said tournament director Rob Merriman of Gornzy, who upset top-seeded Fnu Nidunjianzan of China, 7-5, 6-2, in the first round. “To come through qualifying like he did and upset the top seed in the first round was really incredible. We really enjoyed watching Sebastian all week and he’s just a really great kid.”
Expect some solid play next week at the IOSC from the 17-year-old Texas A&M recruit Perego, who trains at the Academia Sanchez Casal in Naples, Fla.