Court Report: On clay, Isner survives, while Dimitrov stumbles out

There’s no place like home, especially for Americans on the ATP World Tour. John Isner, Jack Sock, Steve Johnson and Sam Querrey have traditionally played their best tennis on U.S. soil, so it figures that the dirt at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston, TX treated them well on Thursday. All four Americans, who just so happened to comprise the Davis Cup team which lost in Australia last weekend, advanced on red clay, though it wasn’t without difficulty.

Isner needed three sets, and two tiebreakers, to defeat Leonardo Mayer, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (3), 6-3; Sock went the distance with 39-year-old Tommy Haas before prevailing, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3; Johnson won a marathon first set over Dustin Brown, 12-10 in a tiebreaker, en route to a 7-6 (10), 6-4 victory. By comparison, Querrey’s no-nonsense, 6-4, 6-4 win over Horacio Zeballos felt like a double bagel.

The four Americans are the top four seeds in Houston, meaning that four more respective victories on Friday would result in two all-U.S. semifinals. Sock will face Feliciano Lopez, Johnson will meet Fernando Verdasco, Querrey gets Thomaz Bellucci and Isner takes on fellow American Ernesto Escobedo.

Meanwhile, across the globe in Marrakech, Morocco, Grigor Dimitov was unable to avoid an upset. The top seed fell to veteran Tommy Robredo—now ranked 385th in the world—6-4, 1-6, 6-1.