Fernando Verdasco entered his match on Monday evening at the Fayez Sarofim & Co. Clay Court Championship with a fine pedigree — both overall and on clay. The left-hander was just two tour-level wins away from No. 500 in his career, and he arrived in Houston with 213 victories on clay. His opponent, American Denis Kudla, had played just nine tour-level clay-court matches, winning only two. But that proved inconsequential as day turned to night on Centre Court, as the World No. 122 defeated 2014 Houston champion Verdasco, the World No. 36, 6-4, 7-6(4) to claim his best victory of the season by ATP Ranking. "I thought it was a great performance by me on the clay. I honestly did...
The 21-year-old American Ernesto Escobedo is looking to back up his semi-final run of a year ago at the Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship.
It all happened so fast for Ernesto Escobedo, maybe too fast. At the start of 2017, the American was No. 141 in the ATP Rankings. But after he reached his maiden ATP World Tour semi-final in Houston last April, he rose to No. 73, with his eyes peering toward the Top 50. Brad Gilbert, a former Top 5 player who coached Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick, predicted Escobedo would qualify for the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan, where eight of the world's best 21-and-under players competed last November. But Escobedo didn't reach the Top 50 or Milan. High expectations and a lack of focus caused the right-hander to finish outside the Top 100 of the 2017 year-end ATP...
It is fair to say that many matches on the ATP World Tour are like wild rides with many momentum shifts and plenty of ups and downs. But before the action got started this week at the Grand Prix Hassan II in Marrakech, some of the tournament’s stars got to enjoy a new kind of wild ride. Radu Albot, Pablo Andujar, Kyle Edmund, Robin Haase, Matwe Middelkoop and Gilles Simon ventured just outside of the city Sunday afternoon into the Palmeraie district, where they rode quad bikes. “It’s nice to go out of the city and drive around the Palmeraie. It was good fun,” said Edmund, the second seed in Morocco. “When I go to South Africa we do similar...
A decade ago, Gilles Simon won the title in Casablanca to begin the best year of his career, eventually finishing the season at No. 7 in the ATP Rankings and advancing to the semi-finals of the Nitto ATP Finals, where he beat Roger Federer in round-robin play. Now, the Casablanca tournament is in Marrakech. And Simon got off to a good start there on Monday, saving a match point before upsetting French compatriot Benoit Paire, the sixth seed, 6-2, 6-7(1), 7-6(5) at the Grand Prix Hassan II. The 33-year-old, who won the Tata Open Maharashtra to open the season, saved match point while serving at 4-5 in the decider and then overcame a 5/1 deficit in the final-set tie-break to...
