Another deep run for Connor Garnett in Atlanta.
“Yeah, not exactly fresh as a daisy,” he said after Saturday’s performance where he and Gabe Tardio ran all the way to a fourth-place finish at the Atlanta Open.
“One semifinal can be a fluke,” he said. “I want to prove I can do it again.”
Coming into the weekend, Garnett had never made a doubles semifinal. Check that off the list.
Coming into the weekend, Garnett had never gotten to the podium stand in singles. You can check that off the list, too.
Garnett is the No. 11 seed in singles and will take on J.W. Johnson Sunday in the men’s singles final. He wound up in a doubles medal match for bronze, falling to Johnson and Dylan Frazier late Saturday evening, but not bad at all, considering he and Tardio had never played together.
“Never,” Garnett said. “We haven’t even played rec games together. We were chatting and we lined it up and we played well.”
They played more than well. Coming in as the No. 14 seed, the pair beat No. 3 seed A.J. Koller and Tyler Loong in the second round, then beat Jay Devilliers and Andrei Daescu in the quarterfinals before falling to the second-seeded team of Matt Wright and Riley Newman.
That’s two semis in the past three tournaments for Tardio, but it’s first for Garnett.
“I don’t think I had even made a quarterfinal,” Garnett said. “Pretty cool. I’m definitely confident. I’ve been working and concentrating on the softer side of the game. I’m glad to see it’s paying off.”
That showed with Tardio as the pair seemed very comfortable, despite the newness of playing together for the first time.
“We found a rhythm of knowing what each other would do and the chemistry clicked pretty early on,” Garnett said. “We were communicating and trusting each other’s shots and it’s been going really well. We were able to talk pretty calmly between points and develop good strategy.”
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