Peru’s Ignacio Buse Stuns Tommy Paul in Hamburg, Ends 19-Year ATP Title Drought
Peruvian qualifier Ignacio Buse outlasted American sixth seed Tommy Paul 7-6(6), 4-6, 6-3 on Saturday to win the Bitpanda Hamburg Open, capturing his first ATP Tour title and ending Peru’s longest drought between tour-level singles trophies in the Open Era.
The 22-year-old from Lima became the first Peruvian to lift an ATP singles trophy since Luis Horna won Viña del Mar in 2007, joining Horna, Jaime Yzaga and Pablo Arraya as the only men from his country to win on the main tour. Arraya was in the stands at Am Rothenbaum to watch the final, and the win vaulted Buse 26 places to a career-high No. 31 in the rankings — surpassing Horna’s career-best mark of No. 33 and giving Peru its highest-ranked men’s player since Yzaga.
The win was anything but routine. The match lasted three hours and three minutes in 30-degree Celsius heat, and Buse needed treatment from the tournament doctor for dizziness after just five games. He fell behind 0-4 in the second set before Paul, the world No. 26 and reigning Houston champion on clay, leveled the match at one set apiece. Buse responded by breaking early in the decider — converting on his fifth break point of the game — and rode that advantage to the finish line, despite a brief wobble while serving for the championship at 5-1.
“It’s the best feeling in my entire life for sure. I feel incredibly happy,” Buse said on court. “I’m also really proud of Peru. It’s the best country in the world so I’m just so emotional now.”
A Qualifier’s Run Through the Field
Buse arrived in Hamburg unseeded and had to play two rounds of qualifying just to reach the main draw. From there, he beat defending champion and fourth seed Flavio Cobolli of Italy, Czech Jakub Mensik, Frenchman Ugo Humbert in the quarterfinals, and American Aleksandar Kovacevic in the semifinals — all before downing Paul. The title is worth roughly 484,000 dollars and 500 ranking points, and makes him the first Peruvian to win at the ATP 500 level, a tier behind only the Grand Slams and Masters 1000 events.
Buse’s father, Hans, a tennis coach, watched the final from the stands. “It’s fully emotional for my family. So many people involved that I cannot describe. This is for them,” Buse said. He added that he had struggled to sleep the night before, “rolling in bed for an hour,” but managed his nerves in the decider. The ATP Tour celebrated the win on its official channels with the caption “A star is born.”
A Boost for Latin American Tennis Ahead of Roland Garros
The result lands at a moment when Latin American men’s tennis is searching for momentum on the European clay swing. Buse’s title denied the United States a clean sweep of the pre-Roland Garros tune-up events; in Geneva on the same day, American Learner Tien came back to beat Argentina’s Mariano Navone for the title.
Buse now heads straight to Paris, where he opens his Roland Garros campaign against Russian world No. 13 Andrey Rublev. Former Peruvian No. 1 Luis Horna — who paired with Uruguay’s Pablo Cuevas to win the 2008 French Open doubles title — has been working with Buse and fellow Peruvian Gonzalo Bueno during their pre-tournament preparation in Barcelona. Yzaga told Peruvian outlet RPP that Buse “handles everything with so much freshness. He has an emotional stability that helps him enormously.”
For a country whose tennis profile had quieted considerably since Horna’s heyday, the Hamburg trophy reopens the conversation.
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