Tiafoe Enters Delray Beach Open Field

The 2018 Delray Beach Open champion Frances Tiafoe will return for this year’s tournament, becoming the fourth Top 20 player in the field for the ATP Tour event that takes place Feb. 9-18 at the Delray Beach Stadium & Tennis Center.

Currently world-ranked No. 17, he will join American compatriots Taylor Fritz (No. 12) and Tommy Paul (No. 14) in the Delray Beach tournament. Rounding out the Top 20 quartet will be No. 19 Frenchman Adrian Mannarino.

Tiafoe will play his first match at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15. Fritz, last year’s champion, will begin his title defense at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 14, and Paul’s first match is now scheduled for Thursday’s Day Session. Tickets are on sale at DelrayBeachOpen.com.

At the 2018 Delray Beach Open, Tiafoe was a wild card ranked No. 91 and defeated five higher ranked players, including No. 10 Juan Martin del Potro, to capture his first ATP Tour title. He added two more trophies last season, on clay in Houston and grass in Stuttgart. In his Houston run, he lost serve just once in the tournament.

Tiafoe’s two titles in 2023 helped propel him into the world’s Top 10 for the first time and to a second straight Top 20 year-end ranking. He won a career-best 40 matches last season and reached the quarterfinals at the US Open. His 2022 US Open semifinal run that included a thrilling win over Rafael Nadal was highlighted in season 1 on the Netflix series Break Point and he is featured again in season 2.

Several players who will play in Delray Beach next month have made an impact at the Australian Open, the season’s first Grand Slam currently taking place. Fritz captured his first Grand Slam win over a Top 10 player when he upset No. 7 Stefanos Tsitsipas to reach his second consecutive Major quarterfinal. He will reenter the Top 10 in next week’s rankings. Last year’s DBO finalist Miomir Kecmanovic defeated two seeds including Paul enroute to the fourth round, Mannarino reached the fourth round including wins over No. 16 Ben Shelton and Stan Wawrinka, and Nuno Borges upset 13th-ranked Grigor Dimitrov and 24th-ranked Alejandro Davidovich Fokina enroute to his first Grand Slam fourth round. DBO Next Gen entry Juncheng Shang reached the third round along with Alex Michelsen, who is in the Delray Beach qualifying field.

Two qualifying rounds for the DBO will be contested Feb. 10-11 with four qualifiers moving on to the main draw. Many qualifiers have gone on to success in past DBO events. Three times in the previous 31 editions of the Delray Beach Open a qualifier has won the title, four times a qualifier has been runner-up (including Daniel Evans, who is in the main draw this year), and 13 times a qualifier has reached the semifinals.

Leading the players who will compete in this year’s qualifying rounds is Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis. He qualified here in 2015 and reached the second round, and played the main draw in 2022 just after winning the Australian Open doubles title with Nick Kyrgios. The 19-year-old American Michelsen reached the final of his second career ATP tournament in Newport last year as an amateur who had committed to play at the University of Georgia in the fall of 2023. Instead, he turned pro and has since reached the third round at the Australian Open with an upset over world No. 23 Jiri Lehecka. In 2022 he won the Wimbledon junior doubles title. Currently the youngest player in the world’s Top 100, he was ranked outside the Top 500 a year ago.

On the other end of the age spectrum in the qualifying draw is 34-year-old Radu Albot, the 2019 Delray Beach Open champion. In that run, he defeated Ivo Karlovic, Nick Kyrgios, fourth seed Steve Johnson, Mackenzie McDonald and Evans, winning four three-set matches and two third-set tiebreaks including one in the final. Also in the qualifying field is 2019 Wimbledon boys junior champion Shintaro Mochizuki and two-time USTA 18s champion Zachary Svajda.

An overview of the 2024 Delray Beach Open qualifying field by the numbers so far:

• One Delray Beach Open champion (Radu Albot, 2019)
• Four Americans (Alex Michelsen, Aleksandar Kovacevic, Michael Mmoh, Zachary Svajda)
• 10 countries represented (USA, Australia, Great Britain, France, Italy, Moldova, Canada, Japan, Croatia, Argentina)
• Eight players age 25 or younger (Youngest – Michelsen, 19)
• Four players age 30 or older (Oldest – Albot, 34)

Here is the 2024 Delray Beach Open qualifying field (current ranking):

(80) Thanasi Kokkinakis, 27, Australia
(89) Borna Gojo, 25, Croatia
(91) Alex Michelsen, 19, USA
(95) James Duckworth, 32, Australia
(98) Liam Broady, 30, Great Britain
(99) Constant Lestienne, 31, France
(100) Flavio Cobolli, 21, Italy
(101) Aleksandar Kovacevic, 25, USA
(104) Michael Mmoh, 26, USA
(118) Thiago Agustin Tirante, 22, Argentina
(130) Radu Albot, 34, Moldova
(135) Gabriel Diallo, 22, Canada
(136) Shintaro Mochizuki, 20, Japan
(143) Zachary Svajda, 21, USA

Two additional players will receive wild cards into the qualifying field, bringing the total to 16.

Opening weekend of the Delray Beach Open starts with the ATP Champions Tour Legends event Feb. 9-11 that features six-time DBO champions Bob and Mike Bryan, the most successful doubles team in the history of the sport, former world No. 2 Tommy Haas, former Delray Beach champions Ivo Karlovic and Sam Querrey, local pros Jesse Levine and Scoville Jenkins, and past French Open champions Luke and Murphy Jensen. It also features the Women’s Tennis Challenge at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10, an exhibition between former Wimbledon finalist and world No. 5 Eugenie Bouchard and 17-year-old current junior Wimbledon champion Clervie Ngounoue.