Johnson advances to face Sandgren in final
Defending champion beats Fritz to reach singles title match for 2nd straight year
Steve Johnson has been there and done that — right here a year ago in fact. He already has jumped in the River Oaks Country Club pool, a longstanding tradition for men who win tennis tournaments on the grounds. But familiarity does not breed contempt. Oh no. He wants an encore dunking, which this time around would aptly kick off a week of both reflection and celebration.
“Just hope it isn’t too cold,” Johnson said, having survived nearly 2½ shockingly chilly, wind-whipped hours on the Stadium Court before dispatching the stubborn, 20-year-old Taylor Fritz 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-2 on Saturday. He broke Fritz twice in the third set, after letting two match points against Fritz’s serve slip from his grasp in the second, to reach an encore Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship final at 2 p.m. Sunday. All-American final
As for Tennys Sandgren, who’s still wet behind ears when it comes to playing on the last day of an ATP World Tour event — Sunday will be his first — he’s well aware of the River Oaks ritual and also hopes to get drenched, damn the unseasonably nippy weather. The Tennessean Sandgren, two years younger than the Californian Johnson at 26, had earlier advanced by neutralizing Ivo Karlovic’s huge serve in a 7-6 (2), 7-6 (4) victory.
This will be only the second all-American Houston final since Andre Agassi prevented Roddick from claiming a third in a row in 2003. ( Jack Sock defeated Sam Querrey for the title in 2015.) Johnson is trying to become the first repeat champion since Roddick won the first two Clay Courts played in Houston, then at Westside Tennis and Fitness.
“To get my hands on that trophy (again),” Johnson said, “would mean a lot, both tenniswise and emotion-wise.”
His victory over Thomaz Belluci in the 2017 finals became the last match his father and longtime coach, Steve Johnson Sr., who was at home in Rancho Clemente, Calif., watching on television, saw his son play. Only 58 and still actively coaching, he died in his sleep less than a month later. Johnson has had a difficult time making his peace with the tragedy, and he had played spottily over the past year before returning to Houston, where he’s the sixth seed.
Further, Johnson will be marrying his longtime girlfriend, Kendall Bateman, a fellow former USC athlete, next Saturday in Southern California, another milestone that, he admits, will be a complicated stew of joy and regret because Steve Sr. won’t be present. But first things first. There’s at least two more important sets of tennis to be played in Houston as he pursues his third ATP title after a collegiate career that ended with 72 consecutive match victories and two NCAA singles championships.
“It’s good to be back (in the final),” Johnson said. “I have a lot of special memories here, both good and bad.”
Johnson pointed out that Sandgren is a kindred spirit of sorts because he also played college tennis — University of Tennessee — instead of striking out as a pro during his teenage years, the route Fritz took.
“It will be a tough battle,” Johnson said. “Tennys plays hard. He stuck with it today against Ivo and took care of business. I’m happy for him.”
Sandgren also wobbled in his second set, suddenly throwing in three double faults in the sixth game to let the 6-11 Croatian get back on serve, and then had to fend off a set point against his serve. But he said he didn’t let “my negative side get the best of me” and he again proved to be the stronger player in the tiebreaker. He never lost a service point in either while registering three difference-making minibreaks at Karlovic’s expense.
Of the out-of-the-blue doublefault debacle he said, laughing: “That was exciting. One turns into two and, once you’ve hit two, why not three? I can’t remember having three double faults in a match. I’m a pretty low double-faulter.”
At 39, Karlovic was the oldest semifinalist of the Open Era in this tournament and the oldest at any ATP event since Jimmy Connors made it this far in 1993. His only previous clay-court title had been claimed in Houston at Westside in 2007. Aces not enough
Karlovic, who has hit more aces than any player in history, hammered another 10 to Sandgren’s five to give him a tournament-best 49, but he surprisingly lost his serve three times in addition to the crucial minibreaks that swung the match in Sandgren’s favor.
“Against Ivo, you only get a couple stabs and that’s the match,” Sandgren said. “You don’t get to play a lot. It’s a matter of, ‘are you ready (for every point)?’ That was a tough match. It’s tough to play him. He does what he wants. It’s difficult. (When he broke Sandgren in the first set), he just hit a bunch of winners. But I was guessing pretty well on his serve, trying to read some sort pattern of where he liked to go when it was close. I took some stabs and got lucky.”
Sandgren staved off a set point in the second set despite having to hit two second serves. The chair umpire had called a let on the first because a ball-person was moving in the periphery. Sandgren argued he should have been awarded a first serve but lost the argument.
“Down set point, second serve … tough time to (get) that call,” he said. “The thing was, I was already in a bad spot anyway. I just had to hit another second serve and he got a look at another forehand. I was still down set point. It wasn’t like I’d done something well and (the umpire) changed it to make it worse. It was still bad. I was still in a hole. I had to climb out of it. I had to calm down. I said what I had to say and that was that.
“I didn’t want to be sitting down thinking about that’s why I lost the set.”
Sandgren played inspired, often courageous tennis thereafter. Given that he’s now two set wins away from the only men’s clay-court championship decided in the U.S., it’s hard to fathom that he dropped a set 6-0 on dirt in Sao Paulo less than two months ago.
“I remember struggling,” he said of the 6-0, 6-4 first-round loss to Rogerio Dutra Silva. “My arm was a little jacked up. I remember having a whole bunch of tape on it. I didn’t really know what to do.”
In the doubles final, the 40year-old Max Mirnyi — Karlovic’s generational counterpart but only now making his Houston debut despite having turned pro in 1994 — partnered with Philipp Oswald to defeat Andre Begemann and Antonio Sancic 6-7 (2), 6-4, 11-9.