We take a look at the selected round of 32 fixtures from the ATP Tour’s US Men’s Clay Court Championships taking place at River Oaks Country Club, Houston, Texas on the 9th of April 2019.
2019 ATP Tour | ATP 250 Series
US Men’s Clay Court Championships
River Oaks Country Club, Houston, Texas
Selected Round of 32 Matches – 9 April 2019
Janko Tipsarevic (11/10) vs Tennys Sandgren (7/10)
Janko Tipsarevic is one of the more instantly recognisable players on tour with those distinctive glasses. He is actually returning in 2019 after a year-long sabbatical due to injury. I was fairly surprised to see the 34-year-old Serbian return at all. He is a former top 10 player having reached the fourth round of every slam. That includes two quarter-final runs at Flushing Meadows. But the long hiatus has proved tough to overcome, with Tipsarevic mostly plying his trade on the Challenge Tour. He hasn’t reached a final since 2013, though he did win the 2012 Stuttgart Open on clay. He will be hoping that this relatively thin event can afford him the opportunity to make a considerable run at full tour level.
His opponent this week will be the utterly unpredictable Tennys Sandgren – yes, that’s really his name. Sandgren caused quite a stir last season in Melbourne. His tennis sparkled, with a completely unheralded run to the quarter-finals of the Aussie Open. But then controversy erupted when his social media history revealing a disturbing trend of links to right-wing conspiracy theories. His deepest run of the season came in this very event, where he was ultimately beaten by Steve Johnson in the final. His all-court movement is clearly well represented on this surface. But Sandgren is an extremely tough guy to recommend. He started the year in amazing fashion, claiming the Auckland title in preparation for Melbourne. But he has since proceeded to lose six consecutive matches on the main tour. He hopefully picked up some confidence with a recent semi-final run at a Challenger event in Monterrey.
This will be their first ever meeting and I think Sandgren is the only sensible option here. It may not look very appetizing with the prices, but he is younger and has the physical capacity to slug it out on this surface. He reached the final last season and should be too good for a player who has barely played over the last 18 months. It may even be worth it to opt for the straight sets option.
Taylor Fritz (5) (13/20) vs Marcel Granollers (11/10)
Marcel Granollers is really your prototypical Spanish clay-court specialist. He is actually a former champion of this, America’s only remaining full clay-court event. He won the title in 2008 and followed that up with a runner-up showing in 2009. He hasn’t exactly been in terrific form this season, winning a barebones title in Da Nang. But he has shown the capacity to compete in fringe clay-court events such as these. He actually also possesses two Valencia Open titles on the 500 Series circuit. So it’s certainly fair to say that he thrives in these conditions, able to revert to his extremely defensive style of play. He is known for being one of the most notorious grunters on the ATP Tour, oft-accused of gamesmanship by his opponents.
He will be coming up against fifth seed Taylor Fritz. Fritz is an up-and-coming American who has been struggling to make the next step up from an exciting young prospect. He became the second fastest American to reach an ATP final, reaching the 2016 Memphis Open in just his third event. He is returning to familiar climes having made it all the way to the semi-final stage last season: he lost a tight three-setter to American clay-court maestro Steve Johnson. Fritz won the Challenger event in Newport and reached the quarter-finals in Auckland. But other than that, it has largely been a struggle for a man who reached last season’s NextGen finals. Fritz is actually the son of a former top 10 women’s player: Kathy May Fritz. If he ever has intentions of reaching that level, matches like these will need to become routine for the young American.
This match looks far more likely to produce an upset. Granollers is a former champion of yesteryear but has true clay-court credentials. Clay-court specialists seem to have an ability to cause shocks that extend beyond their sell-by date. Fritz typically prefers faster surfaces and may find it hard against the crafty Spaniard.
