TORREVIEJA tennis sensation Nicola Kuhn has joined the elite list of juniors to win a men's professional title – just two months after his 17th birthday.
Blond-haired Kuhn, youngest player in the draw, and potentially Spain's next Rafa Nadal, thrashed Davis Cup star Attila Balasz 6-4 6-0 in a one-sided final to take the $15,000 Hungary F2 Futures crown on the shores of picturesque Lake Balaton.
Top-seed Balasz, 11 years older than the 6ft 1in Kuhn and seven times champion of Hungary, had no answer to Nico's versatility and confidence as the Spanish teenager powered to victory in just 104 minutes.
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Hungary F2 Futures champion ...and Nico is hungry for more success
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the previous four days, unseeded Kuhn had seen off four other experienced east European pros, all of them at least three years his senior,
Saturday's glorious achievement came just two weeks after Nico produced the shock of the Mutua Madrid Open in beating world number 61 Nikoloz Basilashvili 7-5 6-0 in the qualifying competition.
The Basilashvili win catapulted him exactly 100 places up the ATP ladder to world number 612 – and the 18 ranking points he earned for Saturday's Futures victory in Hungary will lift him to the fringe of the top 500 when next week's rankings are announced.
Kuhn, who has targeted a top 200 ranking by the end of this year, has been virtually unstoppable since severing his six-year tie with the prestigious Equelite Tennis Academy in Villena earlier this year.
The academy, run by former world No.1 Juan Carlos Ferrero, was a major influence in Innsbruck-born Nico's development – but constant commuting between La Mata and Villena took its toll on him and his parents, who moved to the Costa Blanca when Nico was three months old. The family eventually decided to put Nico's future into the hands of Torrevieja-based Pedro Caprota, the man who coached him before he moved to Villena, along with a new fitness coach, Cristian Ramajo, a new nutritionist and a new physiotherapist.
Nico is now playing the best tennis of his life and becomes only the second player born this century to win a pro title. He began the year as the world's fifth-ranked junior, but is now concentrating on climbing the ATP rankings list and thus avoiding the qualifying rat-race at senior level.
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Top team: Nico with coach Pedro Caprota
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“I wanted to make a change because I thought it would be best for me and my tennis,'' he says of the decision to leave the Ferrero set-up. “At the moment it is proving so. These things happen, there are times when you need a different direction and look for a change.''
Nico, who is seeded number five at this week's F3 Hungary Futures tournament at Balatonalmadi, plans to compete in only two junior competitions this year – the French Open and Wimbledon.
His lack of recent action at junior level has seen him drop from number five to 28 in the world rankings. However, he's more than happy with the compensation of having climbed almost 200 ATP places this month.
Balasz was ranked almost 400 slots higher than Kuhn before Saturday's final - but the ease of Nico's victory in Hungary and the earlier win over Basilashvili suggests that the Torry teenager is a far better player than his current ranking suggests.
''Right now the biggest handicap for me is the physical one,'' he confesses as he prepares to take on the biggest, strongest and most experienced stars of men's tennis. “It is something that the team and I are training to improve. The opponents I have faced recently are already men - and I am still a child.
“Right now my priority is to win the maximum possible matches and to keep improving''.
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