Ronnie Schneider Topples 2015 Winner Ryan Shane In Three Sets

It was a fine two weeks in sunny Southern California for Ronnie Schneider, a 23-year-old Indiana native and recent graduate of the University of North Carolina: he won two USTA Men’s Futures doubles championships and claimed his first singles championship Sunday by defeating Ryan Shane in the $15,000 Los Cab USTA Men’s Futures.

“It’s been a great few weeks in California,” said Schneider, who won the doubles championship last week with Shane as a partner in Laguna Niguel, and who won this week alongside Elliott Orkin.

Lance Lee, newly appointed executive director of the SCTA, Shane, Schneider and tournament director Hank Lloyd

But it wasn’t easy. After exploding to a 5-1 lead in the first set and with the serve, the unseeded Schneider dropped six straight games to lose the first set, 7-5. He recovered in the second set, winning 6-2, and then outlasted the fourth-seeded Shane in the third set, which he won in a tiebreaker, 7-6(7-1).

He’s a great player with a really strong game and I really needed to regroup after the first set,” Schneider said. “I think I Iet off the gas a little bit, and he pinned me. I just told myself to play the next six games like the first, and I straightened it out.”

“I was just happy to get in the finals,” said Shane, who the NCAA singles championship for the University of Virginia in 2015 and who had won nine straight matches, including the finals championship in Laguna Niguel last week. “I think he saw I was hurting a little bit in the second set (Shane said he has felt pain in his left knee the last few days) …I fought with the best I could do out there today, but he played really well, and it wasn’t enough.”

With the win, Schneider earned $2,160 and 27 ATP ranking points. He entered the tournament ranked 887 in the world. Shane, who entered ranked 549, and who won the event two years ago when it was in Costa Mesa, earned $1,272 and 15 ATP points.