Ruud returns at top of the field
Norwegian back in Houston with 7 ATP Tour titles
Three years ago Saturday, with his father — and coach — on the other side of the net, 20-year-old Casper Ruud first whacked tennis balls at River Oaks Country Club, a place his dad, Christian, remembered fondly after having won the 1996 River Oaks Invitational.
The Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship would start on Monday and young Ruud, admitting he was becoming frustrated with his progress up that point, hoped there was still some good family karma to be found on the club's lovely grounds.
The young Norwegian suggested a realistic goal for him in the 2019 season was to crack the top 50 in the ATP World Tour rankings, saying, “If you told me at 16 I would be top 100 by 20, I would take it any day of the week. I'm very happy with breaking through. But there are others who I grew up with that are doing even better.”
Alexander Zverev's name, among others, was mentioned. The 21-year-old German had already climbed to No. 3 in the world.
“That's good inspiration and motivation for me,” Ruud said. “If they can do it, why can't I?”
As it turned out, he could. Now, 1,084 days later — that's how many have passed since the men pros last played in Houston, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic — he's Houston's No. 1 seed on the strength of a ranking that could be as high as No. 7, should he win the Miami Open championship Sunday. Other than the U.S. Open, there are no more important tournaments played on American soil.
Note that en route to the Florida final against Carlos Alcaraz he took out the aforementioned Zverev, who's currently No. 4. But Ruud had showed the fans at River Oaks what would be possible by fighting his way through the 2019 draw before losing to Christian Garin on Sunday. And he has since won seven ATP Tour titles — five of them in 2021 — with an eighth tantalizingly close.
But he's hardly an outlier in the field of North America's only ATPlevel clay court event. Rarely have so many rising stars convened at River Oaks and most of them happen to be Americans, an encouraging development considering no American man has won a Grand Slam tournament since Andy Roddick in 2003. Six of the eight Clay Court seeds were born in the USA, and except for 36year-old John Isner, Houston's 2013 champion, none has yet celebrated a 25th birthday.
Further, none is ranked lower than Jenson Brooksby at No. 39. When the Tour last came through town, only two Americans occupied spots in the top 40. Brooksby, the runner-up to countryman Reilly Opelka in Dallas' inaugural ATP hard-court tournament in February, is the kid in the group at 21 and arguably possesses the greatest upside. But the secondseeded Taylor Fritz owns the biggest match victory of the year by far.
For the first time should Ruud prevail in Miami — and not decide to spend the coming week lying on a beach somewhere — the champions of the two Masters Series 1000s stops that precede Houston's will be in the draw here. Two weeks ago, Fritz knocked off Rafael Nadal in the BNC Paribas final at Indian Wells, Calif. Although he was playing on a badly sprained ankle that had him contemplating a default, he stunned the 21-time Grand Slam champion 6-3, 7-6 (5), an upset that ended Nadal's near-record 20-0 run to start the season.
Currently a career-high 13th, Fritz has climbed 52 spots since he last left Houston as a firstround loser in a fourth consecutive 2019 tournament. His own impatience with a lack of tangible progress at that grim career juncture had showed through when he observed, “People are playing well longer today. But I still feel like they break through at similar times. All those guys — Rafa, (Roger) Federer, (Novak) Djokovic — they were already top-10 and among the best players in the world when they were my age. The window still closes at 24 or 25 to be a top-10 player.”
If that's true, it's now or never for much of the top of the field here. Among the seeded Americans, only Isner has climbed that high, reaching No. 8 in 2016 — but not until he was 31. ( Jack Sock, the 2015 Clay Courts champion and a wild-card entry in this spring's draw, also got to No. 8 at 28 in 2020.) Opelka, the third seed in Houston, is 18th, a notch below his career high 17th achieved after he almost won Delray Beach and Dallas back to back in February, and sixth seed Francis Tiafoe, at 31, is two slots off his career apex, achieved in 2019. Like Fritz, Opelka and seventh seed Tommy Paul, a career best 37th, they're both 24 as well.
Despite the seemingly ageless excellence of Nadal, Federer and Djokovic, with their 61 combined major titles, tennis is definitely trending younger. Although the one-two-ranked Djokovic and Nadal are 34 and 35, respectively, the average age of the top 10 players today is 26, down from 29 in 2019 when Federer, at 37, remained in the mix.
Ruud, for his part, is his country's first top-tenner by a long shot. Father Christian, Norway's previous reference standard tennis player, never cracked the top 40. But the son knows he needs to keep leaning forward. Loftier goals remain. Five of the seven guys above him in the rankings — Daniil Medvedev, Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Matteo Berrettini, and Andrey Rublev — are in his peer group. The Russian Medvedev has won the U.S. Open. Italy's Berrettini and Greece's Tsitsipas have reached the Wimbledon and Roland Garros finals, respectively.
“Those guys have better results than myself,” Ruud pointed out following his semifinal victory Friday in Miami. “They have obviously achieved more. Just look at the facts. I've played Daniil a couple of times and he's just been too good for me. But I've been able to beat two of them (also Tsitsipas last year). It's players we will see around for hopefully 10, 15 more years. And hopefully I can be part of that group.”