In Charleston and Houston, Danielle Collins and Ben Shelton pulled off a rare U.S. double on the dirt

If you build it ... Americans will win on it?

That variation on a famous phrase came true this weekend on the clay courts of Charleston and Houston, where U.S. players powered to a rare double on dirt. At the former, Danielle Collins won her second straight title, and 13th match in a row, with a 6-2, 6-1 demolition of Daria Kasatkina. At the latter, Ben Shelton beat countryman Frances Tiafoe 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 in the final. It was Collins’ second career title on clay, and Shelton’s first.

Was this a sign of progress for American dirtball? Or a moment to savor, because we won’t see it again any time soon? Can the type of game that Collins and Shelton used to win on homegrown clay translate to the less-hospitable European version they’ll see for the next two months?

U.S. clay-court tennis has been a long slog of frustration over the decades, with few big results to show for the effort. Andre Agassi is the American man to win Roland Garros, in 1999; Serena Williams is the last woman to do it, in 2015. More recently, tennis officials in the States have tried to emphasize the clay game, and the USTA included red-clay courts at its national campus in Florida. The first goal, of course, is to win more on the surface, and there have been some sporadic successes, especially on the women’s side. Since 2018, Sloane Stephens, Sofia Kenin and Coco Gauff have made the final at Roland Garros.

But another goal is to teach the type of footwork, stroke production, tactics, and mindset that have traditionally succeeded on dirt. With the rise of baseline tennis and the decline of serve and volley everywhere, those fundamentals are thought to be the keys to victory on all surfaces now. Whether that has contributed to the flood of Top 100 U.S. players over the past decade is impossible to say, but it doesn’t seem to have hurt. The U.S. game is still about big serves and big forehands at its core, but clay isn’t something for Americans to fear, or write-off, quite the way it used to be.

As Collins and Shelton showed on Sunday, big serves and big forehands can work just as well on dirt as anywhere else.

Collins came into Sunday’s final flying as high as she ever has. She had won 12 straight matches, starting in Miami, had lost one set in Charleston, and had knocked off the No. 2 and 3 seeds, Ons Jabeur and Maria Sakkari. Her final with Kasatkina, who had just survived two straight three-setters, and who was giving up a ton in the power department, didn’t feel like a fair fight.

Kasatkina looped her ground strokes and retreated, but she couldn’t move back far enough to catch up with the missiles Collins launched into the corners. The American slugged her trademark crosscourt backhand as confidently as she ever has, and added an equally devastating down the line forehand. But it wasn’t just a one-way onslaught. Multiple times, Kasatkina got ahead in games, only to see Collins dig her way out and win them. She clocked 37 winners to just 10 from the Russian, and won 95 percent of her first-serve points.

“To be able to physically battle and push myself to a new limit gives me a lot of confidence,” Collins said of her back-to-back titles. “To be able to back it up two weeks in a row has just been fantastic.”

Like Collins, Shelton forced the surface in Houston to adjust to him, rather than the other way around. Against Tiafoe, he won the way he always wins: With free points from his serve; surprising injections of pace from his forehand and backhand; and stealthy serve-and-volley at important moments.

With Tiafoe serving at 5-6 in the first, Shelton suddenly upped the pace on his forehand and stole away with the set. At break point in the third, he did the same with a backhand. Tiafoe wasn’t ready for it either time. Shelton, who also hit 11 aces, will move to a career-high No. 14.

Now he and Collins will head to a place where promising seasons for U.S. players typically go to die: The European clay-court swing. Will this year be any different for Shelton, Collins, and their countrymen?

The men’s side will continue to be a tough sled. Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are already in Monte Carlo, ready to start their engines toward Paris. The big serves that carried Shelton in Houston probably won’t take him—or Tiafoe, or Taylor Fritz—nearly as far in Europe.

But Collins was a Roland Garros quarterfinalist in 2020, and she’s playing as well as anyone on the WTA side at the moment. You don’t hear this often about an American, but no one is going to want to face on clay this year.