Final four features unique mix
Garin, Isner, Kyrigos and Opelka are the last men standing
The final four at River Oaks Country Club this weekend offers a compelling mix of demographics, tennis skills and personalities.
The off-the-charts sentimental favorite is John Isner, who turns 37 later this month and has been coming to Houston since 2006, when what’s now called the Fayez Sarofim & Co. U. S. Men’s Clay Court Championship was still played at the Westside Tennis Club.
Asked about his senior-citizen status following a predictably scripted — meaning myriad twists and turns — longerthan-it-should-have-lasted 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 dispatching of his fellow American Frances Tiafoe, Isner replied: “I’m spotting everybody a lot of years.”
But, if seedings/rankings are the be-all-end-all, and if recent tangible results matter, Reilly Opelka should be the last man standing Sunday. At No. 3 and a career-high No. 17 among the ATP Touring pros, Opelka is unbeaten in Texas in 2022. He won the new hard-court stop in Dallas back in February, then reached the finals in Delray Beach, Fla., soon thereafter.
Also, Opelka’s 6-3, 7-5 quarterfinal victory over Gijs Brouwer was by far the easiest Friday — at least among the quarterfinals that actually got played. Nick Kyrgios advanced without striking a ball when the lucky loser turned unlucky leaver Michael Mhoh begged off, blaming a strained groin muscle he’d suffered in a lengthy second-round victory over Sam Querrey. Kyrgios, who faces Opelka at 1 p.m. Saturday in the first semifinal, is the X-factor guy.
The emotive, volatile 26-yearold Aussie is tennis’ version of Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates because you never know what’s you’re going to get from him. As Opelka said, branding him an “exasperating” opponent: “He’s one of the best servers in the world. His intangibles are off the charts. It’s just a matter of how bad he wants it. If he wants it, he’s probably going to get it. That’s the ultimate question."
Kyrgios was once No. 1 junior in the world. He got to quarterfinals at both Wimbledon and the Australian Open while still a teenager and reached No. 13 in the ATP rankings. Today, although ranked only 94th, he has won nine of his 12 matches in 2022 and also copped the Australian Open doubles championship after he and his partner scored a wild-card spot.
At the end of the day, however, if there’s a betting favorite, it would be Christian Garin, who’s a perfect 8-0 in his two visits to Houston. But the 25-year Chilean, the last true dirt-baller still standing, has needed nine sets to reach the semis, and he got himself embroiled in the tournament’s longest match yet on Friday.
The draining whip-saw doozy against the second-seeded Taylor Fritz on another devilishly blustery afternoon — Fritz called it a “windy mess” — could have gone either way a half-dozen times until it finally went his way after 2 hours, 43 minutes.
The 6-2, 6-7 (5), 6-3 score paints a deceptive picture of the proceedings. Fritz, less than three weeks removed from upsetting tennis’ greatest claycourt maestro ever, Rafael Nadal — albeit on a California hard court — did get steamrolled in the first set. But following a sloppy serving patch by both players, resulting in four consecutive breaks, he seized all the momentum to force the tiebreaker, which he promptly started poorly.
But a crushing forehand winner on the decisive point seemed to send an emphatic message to Garin that his unbeaten Houston run was over. It wasn’t. The next thing we knew, Garin had saved a break point to hold in the first game of the third set, then went on tear that saw him claim 12 of the next 13 points, including seven in a row and eight of nine against Fritz’s serve. Suddenly, it was 5-0, Garin.
Just as suddenly, it was 5-3. In the end, Fritz would save four match points before Garin, after fending off another break point with an ace, closed with a clean backhand winner followed by a laser forehand to the backhand corner that Fritz had no chance of returning.
Although not the most emotive of guys — in temperament, Garin is normally the opposite of Kyrgios — he took a ball and smashed it somewhere toward the River Oaks golf course.
“I’m so happy,” he said later. “This is a really important victory in my career. Me and Taylor played at a great level, very intense, for the first two sets. It was an unbelievable match. I put my 100 percent into it. We both play very hard on every point, but I think I played the more important points better in the third set.”
And definitely his biggest W of late. Having lost the opportunity to repeat in 2020 and again in 2021 because what he calls “my favorite ATP 250” level tournament was cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, he returned to Texas after taking a month off to train, calm down an achy shoulder and get his mind right following a 3-7 start to the season.
The mini-slump had dropped him 12 spots from a career-high ranking of 17 at the end of 2022 and left him seeded fifth, a notch too low for a first-round bye.
It remains to be seen how much Garin has left in the tank for Isner. The 6-foot-10 American, who won the tournament nine years ago when he was “only” 27, and his hammer-of-Thor serve presents an whole different package of problems. With all his aces — 445 in 27 Houston starts, or more than 16 per — you’d think his matches would go quickly, but he went into his semifinal against Tiafoe coming off a 2 hour, 22-minute marathon victory over Steve Johnson.
Why? Because he breaks serve about as often as others find a way to break his. Johnson saved eight break points in one of their games. Tiafoe saved five to go up 3-1 in the second set. But those booming serves, more often than not through the years, have given Isner a chance to play another day. He has been as high as No. 8 in the rankings.
Garin, to be sure, knows he’s in for another slog. But to put his momentum in perspective, only Andy Roddick has reeled off more consecutive victories without a defeat in his first U.S. Clay Courts appearances. From 2001 through 2003, Roddick was 14-0 with two titles before finally losing the final to Andre Agassi in his third year.