Week In Preview: As Sakkari and Tsitsipas lead their respective fields, Del Potro prepares for part one of his likely February farewell

ICYMI: Trixie Mattel takes over The Break

If you like tennis for the variety of its events and settings, February is the month for you. Instead of bringing the players together for a single major or a Masters 1000, the next four weeks scatter them over three continents, multiple surfaces, and a wide range of weather patterns. Nothing momentous will be decided in February, and we might struggle to remember any of the results by the end of 2022; yet no month feels quite as full. Here’s a look ahead at week one, where a Greek man and woman headline two 500-level tournaments in Europe, an Argentine plans to call it a career at home, and the men’s game comes back to one its old stomping grounds in Dallas.

ABN AMRO Rotterdam (ATP)

Rotterdam, Netherlands

$1,600,000; ATP 500

Indoor hard court

Draw is here

This high-quality 32-man field is led by a a bunch of young men seemingly on the verge of a breakthrough: The Top 6 seeds are Stefanos Tsitsipas, Andrey Rublev, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Hubert Hurkacz, Denis Shapovalov, and Cam Norrie. Each is coming off an Australian Open that ended, as most tournaments do, in disappointment. But for Tstsipas, who made the semis, Shapovalov, who took Rafael Nadal to five sets, and Auger-Aliassime, who took Daniil Medvedev to five sets, there was promise in their performances, too.

Rublev will also be one to watch this week. He’s the defending champion, but he didn’t have a great second half to 2021, and he went out in the third round in Melbourne. Can the Russian put his name back in the future-Slam-champ conversation? This would seem to be the place to start for him. He’ll begin against Henri Laaksonen.

First-round matches to watch:

• Tsitsipas vs. Alejandro Davidovich Fokina
• Hurkacz vs. 2017 champion Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
• Alexander Bublik vs. Andy Murray

St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy (WTA)

St. Petersburg, Russia

$703,580; WTA 500

Indoor hard court

Draw is here

Maria Sakkari and Anett Kontaveit took surprising stumbles out of the gates at the Australian Open. The Greek and the Estonian, both of whom finished 2021 in the Top 10, seemed ready to make a run at their first major title Down Under. But neither survived the first week. Now they’ll try for a fresh start in St. Petersburg, where they’re seeded No. 1 and 2. But they’ll have their work cut out for them. Elena Rybakina, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Petra Kvitova, Belinda Bencic, Jelena Ostapenko, and Elise Mertens round out the rest of the seeds at this 500.

First-round matches to watch:

• Mertens vs. Alizé Cornet
• Bencic vs. Veronika Kudermetova

Argentina Open (ATP)

Buenos Aires

$686,700; ATP 250

Red clay

Draw is here

Casper Ruud and Diego Schwartzman are the top two seeds here, and it seems likely we’ll see those two dirt-lovers slide their way into the later rounds at this red clay event. But to start, the eyes of the tennis world will be on a countryman of Schwartzman’s, and the most popular and successful Argentine tennis player of this century, Juan Martin del Potro. Delpo hasn’t played since 2019, when he broke his right knee at Queen’s Club, but he’ll return for one last hurrah in front of his home fans. He’ll start, perhaps appropriately, against Federico Delbonis, one of his teammates on Argentina’s 2015 Davis Cup championship team. Win, lose, or draw, there will be tears.

Dallas Open (ATP)

Dallas

$792,980; ATP 250

Indoor hard

Draw is here

The New York Open is now the Dallas Open. Which means that for the first time in 30 years, the ATP will return to a city that, in the 1970s glory days of WCT, served as a launching pad for men’s professional tennis. From 1971 to ’89, WCT held its year-end championship at the Moody Coliseum and Reunion Arena. This year the men will play at a specially-constructed indoor stadium on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

Not surprisingly, it will be a American-heavy field, with seven of the eight seeds—Taylor Fritz, Reilly Opelka, John Isner, Jenson Brooksby, Maxime Cressy, Marcos Giron, and Brandon Nakashima—hailing from the U.S. I’ll be interested in seeing how Fritz handles being a No. 1 seed; how Brooksby looks in his first ATP-level tournament of 2022; and how Cressy follows up his hot start in Australia, where he went 9-3 to begin the year.