It was sport and in sport you lose or you win.
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The giant Argentine had required treatment himself on a right shoulder injury after dropping serve to go 2-1 down in the first set.
But against Pouille, he came up short and now, for the first time since 2004, he will finish the year without reaching at least the quarter-finals at one of the grand slams.
No man ranked as low as del Potro has ever made the final of a major.
The seventh-seeded Italian beat 99th-ranked Lesia Tsurenko 7-6 (5), 6-2 on Sunday. “I fight until the last ball, I need to improve in other things, but I am going to do it”, the Spaniard added further.
Halep, who reached the semifinals at Flushing Meadows a year ago, edged ahead in her rivalry with Suarez Navarro, now leading their head-to-head series 6-5.
Fifth-seeded Romanian Simona Halep advanced to the quarter-finals of the US Open for the second straight year on Monday with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over Spain’s Carla Suarez Navarro.
On Sunday, Rafael Nadal kept making a stand, kept coming back, kept showing he would not depart quietly from this US Open. Facing a much younger, much-less-accomplished opponent, Nadal twice erased a set deficit. The opponent played a good point in the match point, and that’s it.
And then, more than 4 hours into the toughest test he’s put his left wrist through since returning from injury, Nadal faltered.
But after prevailing in a fifth set tie-break, the engaging Frenchman was also reluctant to say it was not the launchpad that would send him into another tennis orbit. Nadal knew what he’d done and covered his eyes with both hands. “We work, I think, harder”, he said. Had the right attitude.
“I fight until the end”, Nadal said after his five-set loss to Lucas Pouille. Nadal could have served better throughout the match, and could have avoided targeting the Pouille backhand once it became clear that it wasn’t going to break down. In terms of tennis I needed more.
Konta, an Australian Open semifinalist, collapsed to the court with trouble breathing during her second-round match, but she didn’t appear to have any physical problems Sunday.
Nadal had been destroyed in the first set, and he had come back.
This was Pouille’s third career victory in a five-setter – and all have come in his past three matches.
Nadal won his last of his 14 majors at French Open in 2014, but soon hit a lean patch.
And when there was the suggestion that the pressure of the best-of-five format in Grand Slams was getting to him, Nadal let out his snarky side in full force.
After defeating Rafael Nadal, Lucas Pouille believes an increased mental strength has aided his impressive run to the US Open quarter-finals. When you have 4-3, 30-Love, when you are there, is 50%.
“My first match on the center court against Rafa”, Pouille said in his on-court interview.
“He’s writing cheques that his body can’t cash”, the American eight-time grand slam victor said. Anyone’s match to win. “Yeah, it’s never done until the last point is over”, he said. “He’s a player that has all the shots”.
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Having led two sets to one, it seemed that Pouille might have to be content with valiant defeat when Nadal moved 4-2 up in the decider. Nadal was not at his best, but he could have still put the match to bed if he hadn’t made those ghastly forehand errors at 2-2 and 6-6 in the tiebreaker.
