Raymond Sarmiento sprang the shock of the Dallas first round, as the twenty-four year old American ranked at no. 365, knocked out fifth seed Benjamin Becker in straight sets 75 75.
Sarmiento had led two-love in the first set, before Becker came right back. The American then broke again late in the set to avoid a tie-break. Becker is based in Dallas, but the Texas resident never really got going, as the second set went exactly the same way as the first, with Sarmiento breaking as Becker attempted to take the match to a tiebreak.
It marks a continued spell of poor form for Becker, who lost in the first round of Australian Open qualifying to Miljan Zekic despite being seeded.
In other matches, third seed Mikhail Kukushkin defeated Dennis Novikov 64 62. Novikov had led by a break in the first set, but the Kazakhstani rebounded well to drop just three more games after being broken.
There was better news for other Americans as second seed Taylor Fritz defeated Zhe Zhang 64 63. It was Fritz’s first match since losing in the Australian Open first round to Gilles Muller. He was joined by fellow young Americans Reilly Opelka, who was a 61 63 winner over Salvatore Caruso, and Frances Tiafoe, who beat qualifier Christian Harrison 61 62.
Veteran American and seventh seed Rajeev Ram defeated Kimmer Coppejans 63 26 62 for a place in the second round. Austin Krajicek also won his first round match with Nikola Milojevic 61 63.
Di Wu recovered nicely from losing in the first round of the event that he was defending champion of in Maui last week, as he beat Tennys Sandgren 76 63. Sandgren had led five-four and serving in the first set tiebreak, but then lost the next three points and the second set to go down rather easily. Tatsuma Ito defeated Alejandro Gomez 64 64.
