The ATP World Tour hasn't existed without Mark Darby. Literally. Darby has been an ATP supervisor since 1990, the first season of the tour. But after more than 27 years of traveling the globe and making sure tournaments and players follow the rules, Darby will retire from the ATP World Tour to spend more time with his family, including his wife and his 14-year-old triplets. The Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship in Houston was his final tournament. Darby was honoured on Saturday during an on-court ceremony. Asked what he'll miss the most, Darby said the countless number of good people he's worked with during his career. “As in a lot of jobs, I think it's more...
Fourth seeds Julio Peralta and Horacio Zeballos won their fourth ATP World Tour team doubles title on Sunday, holding off the first-time pairing of Dustin Brown and Frances Tiafoe 4-6, 7-5, 10-6 to take the Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship in Houston. Peralta of Chile and Zeballos of Argentina saved 10 of 12 break points in the one-hour and 37-minute final. The champions won the final four points of the Match Tie-break to claim their first championship trophy of the season. [ALSO LIKE] The South American pairing also played in the Quito final earlier this year (l. to Cerretani/Oswald). Peralta/Zeballos won all three of their other team crowns last season – Sao Paulo, Gstaad and Metz....
LOOK BACK Open Citta Della Disfida (Barletta, Italy): Aljaz Bedene remains undefeated on the ATP Challenger Tour in 2017, having secured back-to-back titles this weekend. The Brit moves to 15-0 for the season in Challenger matches after he navigated through the field in Barletta to oust top seed Gastao Elias 7-6(4), 6-3 and secure a tour-leading third title of the season. Bedene’s third Barletta title (2011 and 2012) is projected to move him back into the Top 70 of the Emirates ATP Rankings. [ALSO LIKE] San Luis Open (San Luis Potosi, Mexico): Fifth seed Andrej Martin returned to the tour following a prolonged absence out with illness to clinch his first Challenger trophy since 2015. Martin defeated the No. 1...
The doubles field at this week’s Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters is not only stacked with all the top doubles players on the ATP World Tour, but also many of the world’s best singles players. Stan Wawrinka prevailed in his first-round match with Fabio Fognini on Sunday by ousting the veteran team of Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor 6-4, 7-6(2). Their path won’t get any easier as second seeds Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut await in the next round. Two-time Monte-Carlo singles champion Novak Djokovic teams up with fellow Serbian Viktor Troicki and will open against Gilles Muller and Gilles Simon. Djokovic/Troicki ousted Herbert/Mahut en route to a quarter-final finish last month at the BNP Paribas Open. Should they win their first...
Looking at his FedEx ATP Win/Loss Record, it'd be easy to assume Andy Murray started feeling more comfortable on clay last year, when the Scot won a personal-best 18 matches and lost only three on the red dirt. But on day one of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters, the Scot said his successful transformation into one of the best clay-court players actually began in 2015. Two years ago, Murray had never won a clay-court event. But that year he set a goal to take home a clay-court title and he arranged his schedule to help make it happen. For the first time, Murray entered a smaller clay-court tournament, the BMW Open by FWU in Munich, an ATP World Tour 250 event....