Qualifying weekend at the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship set attendance records, and practice courts were busy into the evening. Ben Shelton continued to work in the stadium while Learner Tien spent extra time on Court 4 trading slides and points with Tommy Paul. Fans remained courtside to watch the 20-year-old work through groundstrokes, slices and drop shots.

A Californian of Vietnamese descent, Tien has risen to 21st in the world and has drawn added attention in Houston, home to a large Vietnamese-American population of roughly 150,000 people. “I actually noticed it last year,” Tien said about that local support. The crowd has taken to the young player during a breakout stretch on tour.

Tien has been working with Michael Chang since last summer. Chang, who won Roland Garros as a 17-year-old in 1989, is now 54 and focused on helping Tien adapt to clay. “I have full faith in everything he tells me, and everything he wants me to do,” says Tien. Chang spent time Sunday sharpening Tien’s lefty forehand, two-handed backhand, slices and drop shots. “The way he communicates and the way I communicate are pretty similar, and so I feel like I receive information from him very well,” Tien says.

Working together has affected Tien beyond technique. “My self-belief has grown a lot since we started working together,” he began. “I think part of that is just having success and doing better. I wasn’t someone that struggled with that before in the past—I always had a lot of faith and belief in myself. But I would say that has really grown, since we started working together.” His 2025 season included a 36-24 record, a fourth-round run at the Australian Open, a Next Gen ATP Finals title, a first Grand Slam quarterfinal in Melbourne where he took Alexander Zverev to a fourth-set tiebreaker before capitulating, a semifinal at Delray Beach and a quarterfinal at Indian Wells.

Tien arrives in Houston as the No. 3 seed. He already owns wins over Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, the tournament’s top two seeds, and his victory over Shelton was his second in two tries. He will begin doubles on Monday with Alex Michelsen. “Win or lose, and whether it’s a good week or a bad week, whether I go deep or I lose first round, it’s always very encouraging, energy always kind of remains the same,” Tien says of his mentor.

As evening fell, fans who waited behind a rope were rewarded when Tien stopped by to sign and chat — a brief exchange that mirrored the extra time he hopes will pay off on court.

Jannik Sinner closed March with a run that erased any shadow from the season’s early leaders. He defeated Jiri Lehecka 6-4, 6-4 in the Miami Open final, striking 10 aces, winning 92 percent of his first-serve points in the match and finishing the tournament without being broken.

“Serving performance, it helped,” Sinner said with a half-smile after the final. His clutch hold from 0-40 — five straight unreturnable serves, two aces and three service winners — summed up how he handled the tense moments. That single game felt emblematic of an otherwise flawless month.

Sinner won 12 straight matches and 24 straight sets to complete the Sunshine Double, becoming the first man since Roger Federer in 2017 to follow Indian Wells with Miami. His resilience showed across a sequence of pressure points: against Daniil Medevev in the Indian Wells final he lost the first four points of the second-set tiebreaker and appeared to cramp, then reeled off seven straight points to claim the title. In Miami, after falling behind a break to Alex Michelsen and facing a mini-break in a tiebreaker, he erased errors and closed out wins.

“It was for sure a key moment, holding,” he said. “The conditions were very heavy, so I tried to toss the ball a little bit more in front to get a little bit more whip.

“Having a good rhythm on serve, that helped me for sure.”

For the year, Sinner has posted remarkable serving numbers: he has won 92 percent of his service games, tops on tour, and nearly 80 percent of his first-serve points. He has been ranked No. 1 or No. 2 for going on three years, yet he and his team have still pursued incremental improvements, including offseason tweaks to his toss.

I want to finish my career saying that I did everything possible. Jannik Sinner

“Being young and winning big titles, and then to change, you have to be quite open,” he added. “A lot of practice sessions, a lot of long hours, but I’m very happy with the result.”

The Miami Open title match pits Jannik Sinner against Jiri Lehecka with a clear statistical edge for the Italian. Sinner leads the head-to-head 4-0 and has not dropped a set in any meeting, including their most recent encounter at Roland Garros in 2025, which ended 6-0, 6-1, 6-2.

Sinner arrives having won every set he has played at Indian Wells and Miami this swing, 22 in total, and stands one victory away from completing the first men’s Sunshine Double in nine years. He was tested in the semifinal against Alexander Zverev, when he had to save break points early in the first set and withstand an emotional charge from the German in the second. “What made the difference today? I served very well at the end, which helped me,” Sinner said. “So, I’m very happy about today’s performance.”

Lehecka enters as a significant underdog but produced one of his best performances in the semifinal, defeating an in-form Arthur Fils 6-2, 6-2. He made more than 70 percent of his first serves, did not face a break point and used his returns to push Fils out of position. “I felt that I needed to put a little bit more risk into my returns to be the one who is dictating the pace of the of the point,” Lehecka said. “So that was my goal today, and I think that I executed it well.”

Lehecka will need a near-peak performance to change the pattern. The preview notes a recent blueprint: Jakub Mensik was the last player to beat Sinner, six weeks ago in Doha, accomplishing it with 11 aces and maximal baseline aggression. Lehecka is capable of similar levels of aggression on his best day, and the Miami courts can reward that style. Sinner’s familiarity with these conditions is strong; he is 24-3 on these courts and has not lost a match here since 2023.

The final therefore shapes up as a test of whether Lehecka can summon sustained aggression and precision against a player whose recent form and head-to-head record mark him the favorite.