France, meanwhile, has won nine Davis Cup titles and lost eight finals.
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“I fight until the end”, Nadal said following his defeat. I think I have no shame to say it.
“When it’s happen it will be incredible feeling because that was also one of my dreams”. Kerber will face the tough seventh seed Roberta Vinci in the quarterfinals.
Lucas Pouille was not prepared to say his pulsating four-hour, fourth-round upset of 14-time Grand Slam victor Rafael Nadal at the US Open on Sunday was a career changing moment.
Top seed Novak Djokovic, starved for competitive action, feasted against unseeded Briton Kyle Edmund, gobbling up a large serving of points in a 6-2 6-1 6-4 romp on Sunday that put him into the U.S. Open quarter-finals.
Fifty-two winners from Nadal whose attacking response saw him come out a victor on 35 of 48 forays to the net werent enough.
Winning the final point proved easier said than done as nerves began to set in and the third of Pouille’s match points was wasted with a long forehand which came after a first serve had nearly hit the baseline.
Then he smacked a forehand into the net to give Pouille one more chance and the French player pounced on it with a blazing forehand that kissed the sideline.
“This is my first match on the center court against Rafa [Nadal], so I couldn’t dream better than this”, Pouille said on the court after the match.
“But you are six-all in the tiebreak”.
“He’s a better player than me, definitely”. He has also begun working with his own physical trainer who travels with him to tournaments.
You can not go insane thinking about these kind of things. My serve was a bit better. And I think, as I said after Nadal’s match, he’s in very good form.
“During the pre-season I changed many things”.
“But I need something else, I need something more that was not there today”.
Pouille, who has now won three successive five-setters to reach the last eight, wasn’t intimidated by the massive Ashe stage, even though he only practiced on it a year ago.
“At the end it was full”.
“Come on, to be honest, I’m gonna hurt myself for people? No”.
Gael Monfils reached his first Grand Slam semi-final in eight years with victory in the all-French quarter-final clash at the US Open.
Tsonga, a 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (7), 6-2 victor over the last U.S. man in the field, No. 26 Jack Sock, now plays No. 1 Novak Djokovic.
Monfils had lost six consecutive major quarterfinals since reaching his only previous semifinal, 8½ years ago at the French Open.
The 30-year-old also fell victim to an inspired Pouille performance, the talented world number 25 unleashing a relentless display of power to record the biggest win of his career.
Now, she is back in the limelight, the first Latvian woman to reach the quarter finals of a Grand Slam since 1994.
The 10th seed will meet world No.1 Novak Djokovic or compatriot Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the last four.
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Djokovic put the set back on serve with a break for 3-3, and broke Edmund at love to close out the match. And while most of the spectators came away happy with their lives and privileged that they had watched such a pulsating encounter, Nadal himself might take some time to slay his newfound demons and silence the voices about his big-match jitters.
