SAN CLEMENTE, CA - Chris Haworth secured his first PPA Tour gold medal with a 9-11, 11-5, 11-7 victory over top-seeded Federico Staksrud in the men’s singles final.

After players split the first two games, attention turned to the decider. Haworth jumped out to a 5-2 lead in Game 3, but Staksrud worked his way back into it to tie things up at 7-7.

The No. 11 seed found his best from there, though, coming up with some big backhand winners as he inched closer to the eventual triumph.

Haworth credits his ability to perform in tense moments with the experience he gained from his three-game loss to Ben Johns in the final of last month’s Texas Open.

“In Texas against Ben I felt like I was right there, so when this one got close, I just tried to use that experience to my advantage and was able to pull it out,” he explained.

The No. 11 seed had to face quite the lineup of singles players on his gold medal run, taking down Yates Johnson, Dylan Frazier, and Grayson Goldin in addition to Johns and Staksrud.

He was especially excited to notch wins over the top two seeds in back-to-back matches.

“Those are the two best singles players on tour,” he said of Staksrud and Johns. “They’re consistently in finals, so to beat both of them makes this even sweeter.”

The aforementioned Johns defeated No. 4 seed Tyson McGuffin 11-8, 11-1 in the bronze medal match.