Not much had gone well for Sam Querrey during the first three months of 2014.  Querrey started the year as the American No. 2 on the men's side, but losses to opponents like Albert Ramos, Alex Bogomolov, Jr., and James Ward quickly sapped his confidence.  A third-round appearance at the Australian Open offered little consolation for an eight-tournament span in which Querrey won one or no matches at ATP events.  

But the California native has far more talent than his current ranking of No. 82 suggests.  Querrey often plays his best tennis on home soil, and he overcame the challenges of his least favorite surface to topple seventh seed Lleyton Hewitt at the U. S. Clay-Court Championships.  Hewitt had won the Houston event five years ago, despite his own dearth of clay skills.  The 33-year-old Aussie also had won a title earlier this year in Brisbane, where he stunned Roger Federer in the final.

Querrey needed just one hour and 16 minutes to defeat this top-50 opponent, powering eight aces through the slow surface.  A strong first-serve percentage compensated for his meager conversion rate on second serve, while Hewitt's first-serve percentage lagged at a meager 37%.  The Aussie has struggled in that area as his career has waned, and it will cost him against someone who holds serve as often as Querrey does.  Although Hewitt's return game earned him two breaks of the American's towering delivery, he dropped four of his nine service games.

With this victory, Querrey reached his first ATP quarterfinal of 2014.  He will face Dustin Brown, the architect of an upset over top seed and defending champion John Isner.  Brown edged the top American man in a third-set tiebreak for his first career victory over a top-10 opponent.  He never dropped serve, saving all nine of the break points that he faced.

Brown also regrouped from squandering two match points in the second-set tiebreak, one with a double fault.  The flamboyant German of Jamaican origins might not have seemed likely to find the patience needed to outlast Isner, but the world No. 101 held firm throughout the final set.  Taking control early in the final tiebreak, he nearly let that lead slip away but did just enough to close out the match.

A retro serve-volleyer with extraordinary reflexes, Brown will test Querrey's returns and passing shots in their quarterfinal.  Still, the American will be favored over the unheralded German.  Houston thus offers Querrey an opportunity to build momentum and confidence before he leaves the United States for Europe.