Meanwhile, the last American man playing in the U.S. Open was ousted from the tournament.
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He led by a break at 1-0 and 4-2 in the fifth set, but Pouille broke back to 4-all, and eventually converted his fourth match point in the tiebreaker with a gutsy forehand victor to close a 16-stroke exchange.
“I couldn’t dream better than this”, Pouille said in his on-court TV interview. I played the right point.
“I fought until the end”, Nadal said. “I really wanted to start the match well today”, Djokovic said, “because I didn’t have much time on the court overall before the fourth round, and considering I had some struggles before the tournament”. But in the end I just stop thinking and I just try to play tennis. He missed this year’s Wimbledon and pulled out of the French Open midway owing to a wrist injury.
While he reports continued improvement in his left wrist, the 30-year-old Spaniard knows he still has a ways to go.
More seesaw action was in store, with Pouille going up 6-3 in the tiebreaker but then squandering all three of those match points, the last of them on a forehand that sailed well over the baseline.
“I lost an opportunity to have a very good event here”. I am sad for that.
Nadal was on the ropes after Pouille won two of the first three sets. “I will keep working hard and I am motivated to do that”.
“Most important for me is stay focused on what I have to do and play the right shot”. That was something that I didn’t make today. “I will tell you in few months or in few years”, he said”.
“The main thing is that when I’m on court I have to believe in myself. But now I have one more match to play again, so we’ll see after the tournament”. “Because if I’m not in the top five, I feel like it’s not where I want to be, so at that point, whether I’m 20 in the world or 100 in the world, it doesn’t matter because I’m going to play the same people anyway. That’s what my body is asking me now”.
Frenchman Lucas Pouille rallied from a break down in the fifth set to upset Spanish two-time champion Rafael Nadal 6-1, 2-6, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (8-6) Sunday in the fourth round of the US Open, a match that clocked in at more than four hours.
But he came into his first fourth round at the US Open with a five-set victory over No15 seed Roberto Bautista Agut, his second straight five-setter.
It’s 33 years since a Frenchman won a Grand Slam, though, with the closest being Tsonga’s first ever final run at the Australian Open-eight years ago.
NEW YORK (AP) – Novak Djokovic was not interested in discussing in any detail why he needed a trainer to work on his right elbow during an otherwise matter-of-fact 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 victory over Kyle Edmund on Sunday night that put the defending champion in the U.S. Open quarterfinals for the 10th consecutive year. It would be long.
“So I was ready for it”.
Pouille has now won three five-set matches in a row at the US Open after coming from behind to beat both Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut and Swiss qualifier Marco Chiudinelli.
“I think mentally I’m stronger”.
“I feel this design, in particular, really is kind of like a superhero design”, Williams said.
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Monfils is quite a character himself: In the middle of one point Sunday, he pretended to lean over to tie a shoelace before quickly resuming play. “Maybe it’s a third set, ‘” she said of the thoughts swirling through her head.
