Sam Querrey served notice when Wimbledon began last week by knocking off the No. 5 seed, Dominic Thiem, in the first round at the All England Club. On Manic Monday, he defeated fellow American Tennys Sandgren, 6-4, 6-7, 7-6, 7-6, to advance to the quarterfinals. Two years ago, the 31-year-old Querrey reached the semifinals at Wimbledon. In order to match that result, he must get past his next opponent: world No. 2 Rafael Nadal.
The San Francisco native is on a bit of a roll. After missing about three months with an abdominal injury, Querrey reached the final at the Nature Valley Classic, a Wimbledon tune-up in Eastbourne, in his first tournament back. The 6-foot-6 right-hander with a booming serve hit 25 aces in his victory Monday over Sandgren.
Querrey’s best performance at the US Open came in 2017, when he became the first American in six years to reach the quarterfinals. Here’s more on the California native:
The Sam Querrey File
Age: 31
Birthplace: San Francisco
Current Rank: 65
Career-High Rank: 11 (February 2018)
Best US Open Finish: Quarterfinals (2017)
The Baseline
- Querrey’s win over Thiem marked the sixth time in his career that he’s beaten a Top-5 opponent. That includes two victories against current world No. 1 Novak Djokovic (2012, 2017).
- Querrey has a fan club known as the “Samurai Club” that was started by some of his high school friends. The members can often be seen at matches shirtless with the letters S-A-M-M-Y on their chests.
- In 2015, Querrey appeared on an episode of Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker. Querrey reported that he never heard from the woman he was set up with after their initial date aired. Three years later, he was off the market, when he married model Abby Dixon.
- In 2009, Querrey suffered a freak injury, when he fell through a glass coffee table. He missed three months after undergoing emergency surgery to control bleeding in his arm.
They Said It!
“I know what I’m capable of because I’ve done these things before,” Querrey told ATPTour.com in February. “I’ve beaten those top players. It is frustrating at times when my [ATP] ranking dips or when I lose to people. You’re going to take bad losses every now and then, but it happens probably a little too much for me. But at the same time, at any given point I feel like I can run through a tournament, play well and have those big runs, so I try to look at it that way more than the other way.”
