Former Champions Tiafoe and Opelka Return for 2025 US Clay
Previous Winners Be a part of Fellow People Paul, Michelsen in Subject
HOUSTON (January 9, 2024) – People Frances Tiafoe and Reilly Opelka have been introduced as the most recent gamers set to compete within the 2025 Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Males’s Clay Courtroom Championship. The occasion, which is the one ATP Tour clay court docket event in North America, will probably be held March 29-April 6 at River Oaks Nation Membership.
Each Tiafoe and Opelka are former US Clay champions. Tiafoe, the 2023 US Clay winner and 2024 finalist, will make his seventh profession look in Houston, the place he owns a 10-5 document and has gained seven of his final eight matches. Opelka, the 2022 US Clay champion, will return for his sixth profession look and first since successful the title.
Tiafoe, ranked No. 17, marks the fifth High 50 participant dedication to the 2025 singles discipline which features a pair of People, No. 12 Tommy Paul and No. 41 Alex Michelsen, in addition to South American stars No. 23 Alejandro Tabilo of Chile and No. 39 Tomas Martin Etcheverry of Argentina.
Opelka, a former High 20 participant presently ranked No. 171, is rapidly climbing again up the ATP rankings after battling hip and wrist accidents over the past two seasons. He began his 2025 marketing campaign in convincing kind final week with a runner-up end in Brisbane, his seventh ATP profession remaining. Alongside the best way, Opelka scored his largest profession win, defeating former No. 1 and 24-time Main champion Novak Djokovic within the quarterfinals.
“We’re delighted to welcome again a pair of former champions and American fan favorites in Frances and Reilly,” mentioned Match Director Bronwyn Greer. “Frances is considered one of our longest tenured gamers who has constructed such a particular reference to our event and followers over time. With a career-best win over Djokovic final week in Brisbane, Reilly has put collectively an incredible begin to the season and we hope to see him proceed constructing on this momentum.”
Tiafoe and Opelka, 26 and 27, respectively, hail from the identical era of prime American tennis gamers but have confronted vastly completely different profession trajectories in recent times.
Tiafoe performed his finest tennis of 2024 on American soil, starting at US Clay the place he completed runner-up to fellow American Ben Shelton in an exhilarating three-set remaining. Tiafoe rounded into peak kind in the course of the North American summer season hardcourt swing. Throughout this stretch, he notched a 14-5 document highlighted by a runner-up end on the Cincinnati Open and a semifinalist efficiency on the US Open.
In 2023, Tiafoe posted a career-best season with a 40-21 document and two ATP titles on two completely different surfaces. At US Clay, the American defeated Etcheverry within the finals to seize his first ATP title in 5 years. Months later, Tiafoe gained his third profession ATP title, this one on the grass in Stuttgart, and made his High 10 debut. He additionally helped Group USA seize the inaugural United Cup trophy in the beginning of the season, the place he went 5-0 in singles.
Tiafoe superior to his first main semifinal on the 2022 US Open with an emphatic win over Rafael Nadal within the quarterfinals. On the time, he turned the primary American US Open males’s semifinalist since Andy Roddick in 2006.
Opelka, however, has seen restricted match play whereas recovering from each hip and wrist surgical procedures that stored him off the ATP Tour from mid-2022 by mid-2024. In 2021, Opelka turned the top-ranked American male participant earlier than cracking the High 20, and he reached a career-high rating of No. 17 in February 2022.
In 2022, he captured two ATP 250 titles in Texas, first on the inaugural Dallas Open adopted by his victory at US Clay. Opelka defeated John Isner within the remaining on each events and, in Dallas, gained the longest tiebreak in ATP recorded historical past (since 1990), 24-22. Opelka additionally gained his different two ATP titles on U.S. soil – on the New York Open in 2019 and the Delray Seaside Open in 2020.
US Clay marked a “first” within the careers of each Tiafoe and Opelka. In 2017, Tiafoe reached his first ATP remaining of any type when he completed as doubles runner-up with Dustin Brown. Alternatively, Opelka performed his first-ever ATP Tour predominant draw match in Houston when he superior to the primary spherical by qualifying in 2016.
A Maryland native, Tiafoe was a extremely acclaimed junior who educated on the Junior Champions Tennis Heart in Faculty Park and reached No. 2 within the ITF junior rankings. Opelka, a Michigan native who grew up in Florida, was a 2015 Wimbledon junior champion.
Tiafoe and Opelka be a part of Paul in main the American contingent at River Oaks in 2025. Paul, the Paris Olympics doubles bronze medalist, completed 2024 at a career-best year-end rating of No. 12 after successful three ATP titles and personal-best 45 matches. He will probably be making his fourth look at River Oaks, the place he claimed his first-ever ATP match victory in 2016.
Michelsen reached the semifinals on the 2024 ATP Subsequent Gen Finals, an occasion that welcomes the season’s finest 20-and-under expertise. His look there culminated a yr through which Michelsen was the youngest American to complete a season within the ATP High 50 since Roddick in 2002.
Etcheverry was the 2023 US Clay finalist and returned in 2024 to achieve the semifinals. A 2023 French Open quarterfinalist, he boasts a 40-33 profession clay court docket document. In 2024, he was runner-up in Lyon, semifinalist in Barcelona and reached the quarterfinals at Buenos Aires and Cordoba – all clay court docket occasions.
Tabilo gained a pair of titles in 2024 and broke into the ATP’s High 20 for the primary time. The left-hander claimed his first profession title in January by successful Auckland as a qualifier, then lifted the trophy on the grass court docket occasion in Mallorca. On clay, he was finalist in Santiago and semifinalist on the ATP Masters 1000 in Rome.
The 2025 U.S. Males’s Clay Courtroom Championship would be the 15th version of the century-old event to be held at River Oaks Nation Membership.
