Americans went 1-for-3 in the final round of qualifying play on Monday as American Donald Young lost to Ivo Karlovic in straights, Americna Rajeev Ram lost to Chile’s Paul Capdeville in three, American Alex Bogomolov Jr. lost to Croat Franco Skugor in three, and American Tim Smyczek gained the main draw after defeating Canadian Frank Dancevic in three sets.

“Every one of his service games in the second set was deuce, break point, ad-in, and I was just babying the ball around too often,” Querrey said. “I need to step up and take chances. You can work that in practice all you want, but it’s not the same. You’ve got to tell yourself I’m going to do it in a match. I’m just scared to do it. You can’t be scared to go out there and do that. If I play like this, I’m going to win the occasional [ATP World Tour] 250 and final and win some rounds at a Masters [1000], but I’m not going to get to that next level where I want to be playing like that. I need to step up and take more chances.”

The claycourt season officially begins with two events each on the men’s and women’s tours this week:
Grand Prix Hassan II
Casablanca, Morocco
Surface: clay
$450,000
ADHEREL
Seeds: Stan Wawrinka, Guillermo “G-Lo” Garcia-Lopez, Victor Hanescu, Lukasz Kubot, Paul-Henri Mathieu, Simon Greul, Olivier “The Roach” Rochus, Florent Serra
Floaters: Arnaud Clement, Richard Gasquet
Notes: Kubot after a bye could face Clement; the No. 7 [...]

“I’d rather get through as quickly as possible,” Hewitt told the media, “but I’ll take the wins any way I can get them. I probably could have closed it out a little more comfortably, but the conditions were blustery.”

“He kind of forces you into that the way he plays defense,” Blake said. “It’s no excuse for some errors, especially the ones I made at key times.”