After spending years at the ITF Futures and ATP Challenger Tour, 26-year-old Tennys Sandgren announced his arrival to the main stage at the 2018 edition of the Australian Open, where he took out 2014 champion Stan Wawrinka and 2017 Roland Garros semifinalist Dominic Thiem on his way to his first Grand Slam quarterfinal.
Fast forward to Friday, which saw the American advance to his first ATP World Tour semifinal at the Fayez Sarofim & Co. US Men’s Clay Court Championship in Houston. On a beautiful afternoon, Sandren continued his year of firsts tour as he squeezed past 39-year-old Ivo Karlovic, who had become the oldest semifinalist since Jimmy Connors in 1993, to book a spot in his first ATP World tour final of his career.
Down a break in the first set against one of the tour’s greatest servers of all time, the American clawed his way back to steal the set in a one-sided tiebreak. He took advantage of the momentum, securing a break in the second set. However, closing out the match became a difficult task as he double-faulted three times in one game to hand back the break. He was able to regain his composure to claim the victory 7-6 (2), 7-6 (4).
“I feel like I’m better at maybe engaging myself after things don’t go right,” said the No. 8 seed during his post-match interview with Tennis Channel. “I didn’t let it slip out of control because it would have been easy to.”
Match point from Sandgren's win over Karlovic:
