There hasn’t been much to cheer about in Boulder tennis the past few months, since the University of Colorado dropped its men’s tennis program.
Enter Jeremy Wurtzman.
The 24-year-old, who is spending the summer teaching tennis at the Millennium Harvest House, kept Boulder on the Colorado tennis map with a 6-2, 7-6 (4) victory over City Open champion Bart Scott on Sunday in the men’s open finals of the 112th Colorado State Open at Gates Tennis Center.
“I’ve made a lot of friends up there and it will certainly be nice, not just for Boulder, but for the Harvest House to have a state champion,” said Wurtzman, who is from Rochester, N.Y.
The tone of the match was set in the first game. A big first serve, which Wurtzman said is even better at altitude, was on from the get-go and had Scott guessing. Wurtzman didn’t miss a first serve in the first game, and missed only six (18-for-24, 75 percent) in the first set.
“I was just trying to make a lot of first serves, because he was attacking my second a ton,” said Wurtzman, an All-American at Ohio State in 2003-04. “I was as aggressive as possible on my serve, to get those games over with and work on breaking.”
Wurtzman broke twice in the first set. Although his first-serve percentage dropped dramatically in the second set, Wurtzman continued his aggressive play from the baseline and at the net.
“He just returns the ball really well, and I think that was the difference, our return games,” said Scott, who lost in the final last year to Jeff Loehr. “He returns much better than I do and was able to get into each one of my service games, except for two.”
The two traded breaks early in the second set and then held serve to the tiebreaker. Wurtzman needed only one championship point to put the match away, sending one of just his seven winners down the line for the clincher.
“I felt terrible after I bowed out of the city (open, due to illness). I just wasn’t feeling well,” he said, “I wanted to prove myself and get back at this tournament.”
The preliminary to the men’s final was a 2-hour, 44-minute marathon between two-time women’s champion Rhona Kaczmarczyk and 2002 champion Yana Ruegsegger.
Ruegsegger, who beat Kaczmarczyk in straight sets in 2002, rallied after losing the first set to win 6-7 (5), 6-0, 6-2.
“The first set just relaxed me a little bit, because I realized it was already a good match, so I might as well enjoy it,” said Ruegsegger, who gave her 9-month- old son Nicholas a congratulatory kiss after the match. “So I relaxed a little bit and started making some shots.”
In stark contrast to the 74- minute first set, Ruegsegger produced 18 winners against just six unforced errors in a 39-minute whitewash in the second set.
It carried over into the third set. Ruegsegger, 29, continued to run the 41-year-old City Open champ all over the court and set up points with relative ease.
“That was my goal for the match, and having played her before, I knew how tough she could be,” Ruegsegger said. “She’s a very smart player and she makes you play her game, and I knew if I was going to win I needed to dictate the points.”
Said Kaczmarczyk: “She just started to impose herself a little bit more in the second, and there just weren’t as many free points out there as there were in the first.
“She definitely had me wondering what to do next.”
Ruegsegger had 47 winners against just 35 unforced errors, and 21 of those came in the first set.
Jon E. Yunt can be reached at 303-820-5446 or jyunt@denverpost.com.
