Nadal, who has made an extraordinary comeback from a wrist injury, fought them all off to make it 6-6. He missed a short forehand, pushing it into the net.
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Young Frenchman Lucas Pouille scored a stunning five-set upset over 14-times grand slam singles victor Rafa Nadal, winning a climactic tiebreaker 8-6 to reach the US Open quarter-finals on Sunday. “Was tough. And now I need to come back there”, he added. “I came out of the blocks well and started with the right intensity”. “I [fought] right up to the last ball”, Nadal said after the match.
“I need something else”, Nadal said.
Fourteen-time Grand Slam champion Nadal had dropped only three games in an emphatic win in the pair’s only previous meeting, but Pouille has been on a steady rise through the rankings since that 2015 defeat in Monte Carlo.
But that changed against 22-year-old Frenchman Pouille, who took a dramatic fourth-round match 6-1 2-6 6-4 3-6 7-6 (8-6) at Flushing Meadows. “Yeah, it’s never done until the last point is over”, he said.
Pouille has had plenty of experience in five setters at this year’s tournament: Sunday’s victory was his third in a row a factor that may come into play as legs and bodies tire in the later rounds of the competition.
But since losing in last year’s French Open quarter-finals he has failed to make it beyond the fourth round at a major.
Nadal, victor of 14 Grand Slam titles, then hit back and that pattern continued as the match headed into a decider.
In the men’s competition, the ninth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (France) needed five sets to overcome American Jack Sock 6-3 6-3 7-6 6-2.
Tsonga next faces either world number one and defending champion Novak Djokovic or Kyle Edmund, a 21-year-old Briton who is in the last 16 of a Grand Slam for the first time in his first appearance in the US Open draw.
Kerber’s victory set up a last eight clash with Italy’s Roberta Vinci, last year’s surprise runner-up, who advanced with a 7-6 (5) 6-2 win over Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko. Monfils is quite a character himself: In the middle of one point, he pretended to lean over to tie a shoelace before quickly resuming play.
Next up for Vinci is the victor between second-seeded Australian Open champion Angelique Kerber and 14th-seeded twice Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova.
Anastasija Sevastova also reached the quarterfinals after she beat British 13th seed Johanna Konta 6-4, 7-5. I took my own physical trainer. Now if I say, yeah, of course it’s going to change my career and in one year I am [ranked] 50 I will be wrong.
“When it happens it will be an unbelievable feeling, because that was also one of my dreams when I was a kid”.
“But let’s see what happens here in the next few days”.
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The eighth-seeded Spanish doubles team of Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez defeated third-seeded Bob and Mike Bryan 7-6 (2), 4-6, 6-3 in the quarterfinals to deny the Bryans their quest for a 17th Grand Slam title.
