By HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer
NEW YORK — Frances Tiafoe loves the spotlight. Loves interacting with a crowd. Loves the electricity of being an American at theU.S. Open, at Arthur Ashe Stadium, in particular. What he loves most of all, of course, is coming out on the right side of a match in that environment, at that arena.
Add in the heightened tension of a fifth set against a friend and countryman he lost to in the quarterfinals at Flushing Meadows a year ago, Ben Shelton, and Tiafoe’s attention-grabbing victory Friday meant a lot to him, even if it was in the afternoon, not at night, even if it was in the third round, not Week 2.
Solving Shelton’s big serve and playing brilliantly at the net, the 20th-seeded Tiafoe won their all-American rematch, 4-6, 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-3, across 4 hours, 3 minutes to reach the fourth round at Flushing Meadows for the fifth consecutive year.
“All my friends and close ones (were) saying, ‘How is he not playing at night? I don’t know how I’m going to get there.’ Da, da, da. Blah, blah, blah. I was like, ‘Fact of the matter is, we’re not playing at night. It doesn’t really matter. I just want to win,’” said Tiafoe, a 26-year-old from Maryland whose best Grand Slam run was a 2022 semifinal appearance at the U.S. Open.
“It would have been cool at night,” he said. “Look, it was epic during the day. I think everyone loved it.”
Well, everyone other than the 13th-seededShelton, his team and his fans, of course.
“It was just one of those back-and-forth, back-and-forth,” said Shelton, a 21-year-old from Georgia, “and I wasn’t able to capitalize on the chances I had in the end. When he had them today, he really came through in the big moments.”
When it ended, with one last winning volley off Tiafoe’s racket that he hit quite nonchalantly but was anything but – “Dude, it looked casual, but I was tight as hell,” he said he told Shelton afterward – the pals met at the net for a hug and a lengthy chat.
“It’s important to show it sometimes – that you can be happy for a guy when they beat you,” Shelton said.
Their meeting in 2023 was at night, and Shelton went up 2-1 in sets before winning in four. This time, Tiafoe again trailed by 2-1, but he never went away.
“Just don’t lay down. Having pride in myself,” Tiafoe said. “I just want to win or lose matches, knowing the guy beat me (and) I didn’t beat myself. No free lunches.”
Up next for Tiafoe is No. 28 Alexei Popyrin, an Australian who upset 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic, 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, Friday night.
Shelton and Tiafoe are both part of a group of five Americans in the top 20 of the ATP rankings, making some think the country’s long wait for a men’s champion at a major could end someday soon. Andy Roddick’s 2003 U.S. Open trophy was the most recent Slam title for an American men’s player.
The highest-ranked U.S. man at the moment, No. 12 Taylor Fritz, moved on with a 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 win against Francisco Comesana and now will take on three-time Slam finalist Casper Ruud, who beat Juncheng Shang in five sets after dropping the first two. Yet another American, Brandon Nakashima, who is currently No. 50, advanced by eliminating Wimbledon semifinalist Lorenzo Musetti, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4).
The first men’s fourth-round pairing that was set up was No. 6 Andrey Rublev against No. 9 Grigor Dimitrov. No. 4 Alexander Zverev advanced to take on Nakashima after finishing his four-set victory over Tomas Martin Etcheverry at 2:35 a.m. ET.
Shelton, a left-hander, hadn’t lost serve even once in two wins this week before Friday and did manage to produce 23 aces, reaching 143 mph. But Tiafoe accumulated a whopping 21 break points – the most any opponent ever has against Shelton – and converted five. The last made it 3-1 in the fifth set.
“Since I’ve been on tour,” Shelton said, “today was probably the best that anyone has returned my serve.”
Tiafoe’s been focusing on improving that aspect of his game since pairing up with David Witt, who coached Venus Williams for years.
The other key Friday? Tiafoe kept charging forward, and he kept putting away volleys. He won 35 of 48 points when he made it to the net. As usual, Tiafoe played to the fans, breaking out his “Salt Bae” celebration after one point.
Tiafoe hasn’t always excelled at five-setters: He was just 6-13 in matches that went the distance before Friday. Shelton was 6-2. But none of that mattered on this occasion.
“Once he got that lead in the fifth,” Shelton said, “he really started to fly.”
FAMILIAR FEELING FOR GAUFF
Gauff was not aware that she had lost five consecutive matches against opponents ranked in the top 50. She was not sure exactly how many points in a row she had dropped – 11, it turns out – to give away the first set against Svitolina in her third-round match on Friday.
Here, then, is what was entirely clear to Gauff at that moment: “I needed a reset.” So before the second set, the 20-year-old from Florida went to the bathroom, changed part of her outfit and splashed water on her face. Then Gauff went back on court and extended the defense of her first Grand Slam title by turning things around to beat the 27th-seeded Svitolina, 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
“Felt like a new person coming out,” the third-seeded Gauff said. “I just didn’t want to leave the court with any regrets.”
After making mistake after mistake early on at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Gauff managed to reel off nine of 11 games in one stretch and won again despite losing the opening set, something she did three times en route to claiming the 2023 trophy at Flushing Meadows, including in the final against Aryna Sabalenka.
“It was in my mind today. It gave me a lot of confidence,” Gauff said, “just because it felt like déjà vu a little bit.”
On Sunday, Gauff will face No. 13 Emma Navarro, one of her teammates at the Paris Olympics, for a berth in the quarterfinals.Navarro eliminated Gauffin the fourth round at Wimbledon.
“I did a good job of neutralizing her serve and just playing really aggressive from the baseline and pushing back against her groundstrokes,” Navarro, who is from South Carolina and won an NCAA title for Virginia, said about that matchup last month. “And then always getting one more ball back in the court.”
Navarro advanced Friday with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 victory over No. 19 Marta Kostyuk. Other women’s fourth-round matchups set up in the afternoon were No. 7 Zheng Qinwen vs. No. 24 Donna Vekic, and No. 26 Paula Badosa vs. Wang Yafan. No. 2 Sabalenka beat No. 29 Ekaterina Alexandrova, 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, in the latest-starting women’s match in U.S. Open history and will face No. 33 Elise Mertens, who outlasted No. 14 Madison Keys in three sets, 6-7 (5), 7-5, 6-4.
Zheng-Vekic is a rematch of the gold medal match at the Summer Games four weeks ago; Zheng won that one.
Vekic beat Gauff in the third round at the Olympics, part of Gauff’s recent drought against top-50 foes. That also was part of a recent slump that saw Gauff win just five of her previous nine matches.
Such a contrast to a year ago, when Gauff won 18 of 19, and 12 in a row, along the way to two tuneup titles on hard courts and then thechampionship at the U.S. Openthat made her the first U.S. teenager to triumph at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams in 1999.
By the conclusion of one set against Svitolina, it seemed as if another loss might be in the offing. Gauff’s totals were 16 unforced errors – nine on backhands – and just seven winners. She put only 45% of her first serves in. She went 0 for 3 on break points. She allowed Svitolina to claim 19 of the 28 points that lasted more than four strokes.
All of those numbers got better across the last two sets as Gauff tried to be more aggressive with her forehands and be more careful with her backhands. And something else changed, at the behest of her coaches: Gauff got the partisan crowd more involved.
Svitolina said afterward she was bothered by an ankle injury picked up last week
“I feel like she started to go (for) more a little bit. But to be fair, I didn’t play the way that I wanted to play. … Then she started to be more alive,” said Svitolina, a three-time Slam semifinalist. “And, of course, the crowd was behind her.”
Everything began to change for Gauff on Friday after 1 hour, 10 minutes, when she broke to lead 4-2 in the second set, smacking a cross-court forehand winner. She celebrated with a yell of “Come on!” and raised her left hand to wiggle her fingers and ask the spectators to get louder.
Soon that set belonged to Gauff, who closed it with a 94 mph ace, shook a fist and shouted.
In the third, with UConn women’s basketball stars Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd sitting in her guest box at Ashe, Gauff broke right away, then held to go up 2-0 with the help of one 38-stroke point that she took when Svitolina sent a backhand wide.
Soon it was 5-1 for Gauff, whose only late wobble came when she served for the match at 5-2. She wasted three match points and got broken there. But Gauff broke right back to close things out.
“I’m glad that I had that match,” Gauff said, “because I think it just makes me match-tough and gets me ready, probably, for future challenges.”
LATE NIGHT FOR SABALENKA
Aryna Sabalenka finally got rolling after a bad beginning to the latest-starting match in U.S. Open history, regrouping to beat No. 29 Ekaterina Alexandrova, 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, early Saturday (ET) to reach the fourth round.
The No. 2 seed didn’t get underway until 12:07 a.m. and had dropped the first set barely a half-hour later. But she seized control early in the second set, winning 10 straight games to open a 5-0 lead in the third.
The runner-up last year in Flushing Meadows eventually finished off the victory at 1:48, tied for the second-latest ending to a women’s match at the U.S. Open, and advanced to face No. 33 seed Elise Mertens on Sunday.
“I was happy that I was able to stay focused, no matter what, and I was able to turn around this match,” Sabalenka said.
The previous latest start to a women’s match at the U.S. Open was exactly at midnight on Sept. 2, 1987, with Gabriela Sabatini going on to beat Beverly Bowes, 6-3, 6-3.
The night session at Arthur Ashe Stadium began more than an hour after its usual 7 p.m. starting time following Tiafoe’s victory over Shelton.
Under a new late-night match policy the tournament debuted this year, the tournament referee can move any match that hasn’t gone on by 11:15 p.m. Instead, Sabalenka and Alexandrova were kept on Ashe, finally getting on the court after Djokovic was shocked by Popyrin in four sets.
A U.S. Tennis Association spokesman said tournament officials kept the Grandstand available in the event they wanted to move the Sabalenka-Alexandrova match. A decision was going to be made by the end of the fourth set of the Djokovic-Popyrin match.
Sabalenka said her desire was to remain on Ashe, though she would prefer it be in the opener of the night session and put the men second.
The bigger problem was the quick start by Alexandrova, who broke Sabalenka’s serve twice in the first set.
“She just crushed it. She played so well,” Sabalenka said.
But once Sabalenka broke for a 3-1 lead in the second set, she got going quickly from there to wrap it up earlier than the latest end of a women’s match, when Maria Sakkari finished off Bianca Andreescu at 2:13 a.m. on Sept. 6, 2021.
Sabalenka hoped to be in bed by 4 a.m. and sleep as long as she could.
“Technically, I did my practice session today, so I’m good for tomorrow, right?” she joked. “Can I just tell my team that? It’s 2 a.m.; we count it like today.”
The match wasn’t the last to end. Fourth-seeded Alexander Zverev outlasted Tomas Martin Etcheverry, 5-7, 7-5, 6-1, 6-3, in a match that ended at 2:35 a.m.
AP sports writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this story.
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