Preview and Schedule ATP DC Open 2025: Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton lead home charge

The ATP 500 DC Open 2025 will take place from July 21 to 27, definitively marking the beginning of the North American hardcourt swing and the first event to bring several top-10 tennis players back to hardcourts. After several months on the European clay and grass tours, ATP stars return to the USA with a view to a crucial moment in the season.

The tournament will feature a luxurious draw, including up to five top-10 tennis players, and where all eight seeds are within the top 14. Local favorites Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton lead the draw, which will also see the stellar return of Italian Lorenzo Musetti – now recovered from his injury – and Dane Holger Rune – who suffered a surprise in the first round of Wimbledon.

At TennisUpToDate, we bring you the details and current form of the tournament's big names, who will begin to shape what the hardcourt swing will be. With the change of surface and after a Grand Slam, favoritisms are reconfigured, and those who haven't had the best recent form will have a new opportunity to push forward in the season.

Defending champion Sebastian Korda is once again suffering from injuries and will not be able to play the tournament, after sustaining a stress fracture in his right shin that already kept him out of the grass-court swing, including Wimbledon.

The first seed is World No. 4 Taylor Fritz, who is always a name to watch at home events, and who has achieved his best results on hardcourt. He arrives in great confidence after reaching the Wimbledon semifinals and will look to quickly gain confidence on hardcourts, considering he has an important objective in a few weeks: defending the US Open final he reached a year ago.

Fritz will face several significant challenges in the draw, including his compatriot Ben Shelton (3rd seed). The 22-year-old has established himself as a deserving top-10 player and also holds strong favoritism on hardcourts. He had a great performance at Wimbledon, reaching the quarterfinals – only falling to Jannik Sinner. It seems only a matter of time before Shelton grows even further on the Tour, and by age and talent, he appears to be one of the few names that can challenge the dominance of Sinner and Alcaraz in the short and medium term. Without a doubt, the main objective will be the US Open in a month, so he will quickly seek to accumulate wins that allow him to arrive with confidence.

The second seed Lorenzo Musetti had been one of the most consistent players of the season with a truly remarkable clay swing: a final in Monte Carlo and semifinals in Madrid, Rome, and Roland Garros. However, an injury affected him during the grass swing, and he arrived at Wimbledon lacking rhythm, where he fell in the first round of the tournament. The Italian has had a few more weeks this time to get in shape and will have to show if he is ready to face the hardcourt swing in good physical condition.

On the other hand, Holger Rune is another player who suffered a disappointment at Wimbledon. He was tipped as a candidate for a deep run, but a disaster in the first round saw him eliminated after he led Nicolas Jarry by two sets to love, only for the Chilean to stage a comeback, taking the next three sets consecutively – probably the most impactful first-round defeat among male players.

The DC Open draw is by no means negligible in terms of its players' names and current form. Among the standouts is World No. 10 Andrey Rublev, a recent semifinalist at the Los Cabos Open. Although the Russian seemed a favorite to win the title there, he was surprisingly eliminated by Aleksandar Kovacevic. Nevertheless, he will have a slight advantage over most of the other contenders, as he has already accumulated several competitive matches on hardcourts, which could be key to achieving a deep run – and why not – even thinking about the title, taking advantage of the shorter adaptation time that other candidates have had.

Also noteworthy are local player Frances Tiafoe (No. 11), Australian Alex de Minaur (No. 13), and Russian former World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev (No. 14).