During the changeover right before the last game, it suddenly began to rain, and play was delayed only slightly before the shower passed. The new retractable roof at Arthur Ashe Stadium was not closed. He’s yet to play any marathon matches, though, with three straight-set wins.
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‘I played extremely well and tactically I played a good match, ‘ he said. “Maybe that allowed me to feel like I was able to swing a little bit harder”. “Got a lot of free points with my serve and that was important”.
Williams hit a tournament-leading 126 miles per hour serve, pounded 11 aces, won 28 of 30 points when a first serve landed in, and didn’t face a break point against the 52nd-ranked Shvedova.
“He has good feel, moves well”.
The victor of this match will go onto play either Kei Nishikori or Ivo Karlovic in the quarter-finals on Thursday Morning (AEST). Since then, the 25-year-old has gone 10-3, racking up impressive wins over Ivo Karlovic, Feliciano Lopez, Stan Wawrinka, and Steve Johnson in the process. A new venue to be built to replace it.
Now, though, Murray has a chance to become only the fourth man in the Open era to reach all four Grand Slam finals in a single season. At 6-foot-11, he set a tournament record with 61 aces in a five-set win in the first round.
The talented Bulgarian has yet to make it past the round of 16 at any Grand Slam since storming into his first major semi-final at Wimbledon in 2014.
After a strong showing in Cincinnati where he would eventually fall to Marin Cilic, he has managed to advance to the fourth round even if it hasn’t been completely comfortable.
Overall Murray leads the head to head 6-3.
Marchenko had dropped the first set of his third-round match against 14th-seeded Nick Kyrgios but won the next two as the Australian struggled with a hip injury that eventually forced him to retire.
Juan Martin del Potro is back in the U.S. Open quarterfinals after Dominic Thiem retired in the second set of their match.
The second seed said he did not overlook Lorenzi.
“When we do training blocks together they would see the work I’m doing, But it’s one thing sort of saying, “Oh, I went and did a training block with Andy, watched him train, and he works really hard” – they still need to do the work themselves”.
Thiem said his knee started hurting three days earlier, and he speculated it was the indirect result of blisters on his feet – he needed to alter his gait to compensate. Late in the first set Monday, it started getting worse. “I only did it once – I think it was luck”. I was quite impatient at times.
But just as Dimitrov got the set on serve, it quickly went in the opposite direction, a double-fault gifting the break back to Murray, who took a two-sets-to-love lead and never looked back, dropping just two games in the third.
Thiem, who turned 23 on Saturday, has had a breakthrough year, reaching the French Open semifinals and cracking the top 10.
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Before this year’s Rogers Cup presented by National Bank, Dimitrov had gone 20-16 on the year, with the Bulgarian having to overcome a six-match losing streak midway through the season to rediscover some of the form that saw him crack the top 8 just over two years ago.
