Former Champions Tiafoe and Opelka Return for 2025 US Clay

Past Winners Join Fellow Americans Paul, Michelsen in Field

HOUSTON (January 9, 2024) – Americans Frances Tiafoe and Reilly Opelka have been announced as the latest players set to compete in the 2025 Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship. The event, which is the only ATP Tour clay court tournament in North America, will be held March 29-April 6 at River Oaks Country Club.

Both Tiafoe and Opelka are former US Clay champions. Tiafoe, the 2023 US Clay winner and 2024 finalist, will make his seventh career appearance in Houston, where he owns a 10-5 record and has won seven of his last eight matches. Opelka, the 2022 US Clay champion, will return for his sixth career appearance and first since winning the title.

Tiafoe, ranked No. 17, marks the fifth Top 50 player commitment to the 2025 singles field which includes a pair of Americans, No. 12 Tommy Paul and No. 41 Alex Michelsen, as well as South American stars No. 23 Alejandro Tabilo of Chile and No. 39 Tomas Martin Etcheverry of Argentina.

Opelka, a former Top 20 player currently ranked No. 171, is quickly climbing back up the ATP rankings after battling hip and wrist injuries over the last two seasons. He started his 2025 campaign in convincing form last week with a runner-up finish in Brisbane, his seventh ATP career final. Along the way, Opelka scored his biggest career win, defeating former No. 1 and 24-time Major champion Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals.

“We are delighted to welcome back a pair of former champions and American fan favorites in Frances and Reilly,” said Tournament Director Bronwyn Greer. “Frances is one of our longest tenured players who has built such a special connection with our tournament and fans over the years. With a career-best win over Djokovic last week in Brisbane, Reilly has put together an amazing start to the season and we hope to see him continue building on this momentum.”

Tiafoe and Opelka, 26 and 27, respectively, hail from the same generation of top American tennis players yet have faced vastly different career trajectories in recent years.

Tiafoe played his best tennis of 2024 on American soil, beginning at US Clay where he finished runner-up to fellow American Ben Shelton in a thrilling three-set final. Tiafoe rounded into peak form during the North American summer hardcourt swing. During this stretch, he notched a 14-5 record highlighted by a runner-up finish at the Cincinnati Open and a semifinalist performance at the US Open.

In 2023, Tiafoe posted a career-best season with a 40-21 record and two ATP titles on two different surfaces. At US Clay, the American defeated Etcheverry in the finals to capture his first ATP title in five years. Months later, Tiafoe won his third career ATP title, this one on the grass in Stuttgart, and made his Top 10 debut. He also helped Team USA capture the inaugural United Cup trophy at the beginning of the season, where he went 5-0 in singles.

Tiafoe advanced to his first major semifinal at the 2022 US Open with an emphatic win over Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals. At the time, he became the first American US Open men’s semifinalist since Andy Roddick in 2006.

Opelka, on the other hand, has seen limited match play while recovering from both hip and wrist surgeries that kept him off the ATP Tour from mid-2022 through mid-2024. In 2021, Opelka became the top-ranked American male player before cracking the Top 20, and he reached a career-high ranking of No. 17 in February 2022.

In 2022, he captured two ATP 250 titles in Texas, first at the inaugural Dallas Open followed by his victory at US Clay. Opelka defeated John Isner in the final on both occasions and, in Dallas, won the longest tiebreak in ATP recorded history (since 1990), 24-22. Opelka also won his other two ATP titles on U.S. soil – at the New York Open in 2019 and the Delray Beach Open in 2020.

US Clay marked a “first” in the careers of both Tiafoe and Opelka. In 2017, Tiafoe reached his first ATP final of any kind when he finished as doubles runner-up with Dustin Brown. Alternatively, Opelka played his first-ever ATP Tour main draw match in Houston when he advanced to the first round through qualifying in 2016.

A Maryland native, Tiafoe was a highly acclaimed junior who trained at the Junior Champions Tennis Center in College Park and reached No. 2 in the ITF junior rankings. Opelka, a Michigan native who grew up in Florida, was a 2015 Wimbledon junior champion.

Tiafoe and Opelka join Paul in leading the American contingent at River Oaks in 2025. Paul, the Paris Olympics doubles bronze medalist, finished 2024 at a career-best year-end ranking of No. 12 after winning three ATP titles and personal-best 45 matches. He will be making his fourth appearance at River Oaks, where he claimed his first-ever ATP match victory in 2016.

Michelsen reached the semifinals at the 2024 ATP Next Gen Finals, an event that welcomes the season’s best 20-and-under talent. His appearance there culminated a year in which Michelsen was the youngest American to finish a season in the ATP Top 50 since Roddick in 2002.

Etcheverry was the 2023 US Clay finalist and returned in 2024 to reach the semifinals. A 2023 French Open quarterfinalist, he boasts a 40-33 career clay court record. In 2024, he was runner-up in Lyon, semifinalist in Barcelona and reached the quarterfinals at Buenos Aires and Cordoba – all clay court events.

Tabilo won a pair of titles in 2024 and broke into the ATP’s Top 20 for the first time. The left-hander claimed his first career title in January by winning Auckland as a qualifier, then lifted the trophy at the grass court event in Mallorca. On clay, he was finalist in Santiago and semifinalist at the ATP Masters 1000 in Rome.

The 2025 U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship will be the 15^th edition of the century-old tournament to be held at River Oaks Country Club.