TENNIS NEWS FROM 10SBALLS – WINSTON-SALEM OPEN GIVES PLAYERS LAST CHANCE TO FINE-TUNE GAMES FOR U.S. OPEN

Written by: Staff on 21st August 2016

TENNIS NEWS FROM 10SBALLS - WINSTON-SALEM OPEN GIVES PLAYERS LAST CHANCE TO FINE-TUNE GAMES FOR U.S. OPEN |

Defending #WSOpen champ @kevinanderson18 back on Stadium, where he won it all last year. Welcome back! – Photo by @WSOpen via Twitter.

By Ricky Dimon

With the Olympics over and the Cincinnati Masters having come and gone, the tennis world has now arrived at one of those infamous weeks that immediately precede a major. As always, just about anything could happen in at the Winston-Salem Open because plenty of participants will already be more interested in the upcoming U.S. Open. Take last summer for example, when Pierre-Hugues Herbert contested nine matches in nine days before finishing runner-up to Kevin Anderson as a qualifier. In other words, this is an event at which you should expect the unexpected.

Ricky previews the tournament and makes his predictions:

Winston-Salem Open

Where: Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Surface: Hard

Points: 250

Top seed: Richard Gasquet

Defending champion: Kevin Anderson

Draw analysis: For the first time ever, Steve Johnson will play an event as the top-ranked American man. And he will do so in what has to be considered the American section of the draw. Of the seven entrants hailing from the host nation, six are in the bottom half: Johnson, Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe, Donald Young, Sam Querrey, and Rajeev Ram. Johnson and Querrey have byes through to round two and could square off in the semis, while Fritz and Tiafoe are facing each other in an intriguing opener. Young, meanwhile, is going up against Herbert right away.

Some rest prior to 2016’s final Grand Slam could serve Johnson well, and that is exactly what he may get given his treacherous early-round road in Winston-Salem. The world No. 23 could kick off his campaign against 2014 champion Lukas Rosol before possibly meeting Fernando Verdasco in the last 16. Querrey looks to have a more favorable path, as other competitors n his eighth of the bracket are slumping at the moment (Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and Viktor Troicki among them).

The top half seems to be especially wide open. Of the eight men with first-round byes, only two—Anderson and Richard Gasquet—are particularly accomplished on hard courts. And both of them have been hampered by injuries this year, to the extent that they may be less than 100 percent this week. Gasquet has a tough opener on his hands against Daniel Evans, while Anderson likely awaits Wimbledon fourth-round finisher Jiri Vesely. Don’t be surprised if Pablo Cuevas, who is 30-16 this year and inside the top 20 at 19th in the rankings, makes a run.

First-round upset alert: (WC) Frances Tiafoe over Taylor Fritz. Tiafoe has not achieved the same kind of ATP-level success as his fellow 18-year-old American, but he is 4-0 in the head-to-head series. Three of those wins came in juniors before Tiafoe again defeated Fritz 6-3, 2-6, 6-3 at the Indian Wells Masters earlier this season. Ranked 54th in the world, Fritz appears to be slowing down in the wake of a heavy schedule. He has lost eight of his last 11 matches after getting clobbered by Youzhny in the Cincinnati first round.

Quarterfinal picks: Richard Gasquet over John Millman, Pablo Cuevas over Jiri Vesely, Sam Querrey over Fernando Verdasco, and Joao Sousa over Marcos Baghdatis

Semifinal picks: Cuevas over Gasquet and Querrey over Sousa

Final pick: Querrey over Cuevas