Chris Lam's passion has brought him home this week. He left as Hawai'i's top-ranked tennis player and spent four years earning a degree and immense success at the highest level of the collegiate game.

He is back as the penniless touring pro in the Honolulu Futures Pro Circuit event this week at University of Hawai'i.

Lam is about three inches taller and 20 pounds heavier than when he left for Santa Clara, after running local competition ragged as a home-schooled junior out of Kaimuki. He played No. 1 for the Broncos, earned conference Freshman of the Year honors, then transferred to UCLA as a sophomore.

After two all-conference seasons and a ranking that reached as high as No. 18, Lam's final collegiate match came in May as the seventh-seeded Bruins won their first NCAA tennis title since 1984, ending top-seeded Baylor's 57-match winning streak.

"There were three other seniors, so for us to come through and win, it was amazing, a great experience," Lam said.

Lam, who has been playing tennis since he was 4, can't get the game out of his system. He has grown good enough — with a style UCLA coach Billy Martin describes as "forcing the opponent to be impatient" — that he is able to pursue it as a career at age 22.

This is his seventh USTA Pro Circuit event since turning pro before the Kailua Racquet Club Men's Night Doubles.

"It's something I love doing," he said. "There have been some hard times when I felt like it was not what I want to do, but in the end I can't stop playing. I always end up coming back to tennis. It's in me. It's what I like to do."

Enough so that a three-time Pac-10 first-team all-academic selection, with a degree in business economics and a minor in accounting, will play seventh-seeded Jess Witten this afternoon in the Futures first round.

Witten is ranked 492nd in the world. Lam, thanks to winning a round at a similar event in Southern California, is No. 1,432.

He is working and waiting on his next breakthrough. The first came when he began working with Calvin Nii just before Lam turned 18. Nii revamped his game and his body, jump-starting Lam's college career.

"Everything he learned in the past was re-done," Nii said. "Chris is under-valued, even in his own eyes. I saw a different guy than what everyone else saw. They didn't recognize what a fantastic talent he really is."

What Nii saw most vividly was exceptional athletic ability. He calls that one of the elements that "creates separation" for players who reach this level. According to Nii, everyone on the pro tours can hit every shot. Those that win are players quick enough to get in position to hit the right shot every time.

That was usually enough in college. Now Lam and Nii are concentrating on "focus" to rise to the next level. The players on the Pro Circuit have no technical weakness. Those who move up from $15,000 events to $15 million Grand Slams, are those that think only about winning this point.

"As soon as you divert your attention from what's happening right in front of you, you can't perform your best," Nii said. "At this level, it's all about who can perform their best, who can consistently, point after point after point, find their best level."

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.