The young Frenchman held his nerves in the tiebreaker and advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-1, 2-6,6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (6) win.
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“When it’s happen it will be fantastic feeling because that was also one of my dreams”.
Kerber will face Italy’s Roberta Vinci for a spot in the semi-finals.
Lucas Pouille, of France, reacts after beating Rafael Nadal, of Spain, during the fourth round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, in NY.
When he reached the quarter-finals of Wimbledon this year, many tipped the 22-year-old Lucas Pouille as a star of the future.
Pouille came out firing, pushing Nadal back with an array of deep groundstrokes and angled shots.
Fifty-two winners from Nadal – whose attacking response saw him come out a victor on 35 of 48 forays to the net – weren’t enough.
Playing his third consecutive five-set match on Sunday, the 24th seed Pouille showed that his quarter-final advance earlier this season at Wimbledon was no fluke.
In arguably the most exciting match of the tournament so far, a tie-break was needed to separate the two players, with the 22-year-old Pouille keeping his composure to win the biggest match of his career with a brilliant forehand that Nadal could not chase down.
France’s Lucas Pouille claimed the biggest win of his career as he beat two-time champion Rafael Nadal in a sensational US Open last-16 match.
A tiebreaker eventually had to decide the whole thing, at which point Pouille raced to 6-3 advantage. I played the right point. He has also begun working with his own physical trainer who travels with him to tournaments. That’s it. You can not go insane thinking about these kind of things.
Rafael Nadal crashed out in the fourth round at US Open.
Mirza and Dodig lost the match in straight sets as the top seeded Indo-Russian combination were unable to put up a fight, losing 3-6, 4-6, in a game which lasted one hour and five minutes.
“It was tough and now I need to come back there”. A gritty Nadal battled back to level the breaker at 6-all as the excitement within Arthur Ashe Stadium reached a breaking point.
“I think mentally I’m stronger. Usually I have to do all that myself”.
Pouille was joined in the quarterfinals by a pair of countrymen, No. 9 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and No. 10 Gael Monfils, giving France three men’s quarterfinalists at the American Grand Slam tournament for the first time in 89 years. And after winning at least one Grand Slam title each year for a decade, he’s now gone two full seasons without one.
The other quarterfinal on that side of the draw will feature Tsonga against No. 1 Novak Djokovic or 84th-ranked Kyle Edmund of Britain.
Novak Djokovic, of Serbia, celebrates after defeating Kyle Edmund, of Britain, in the fourth round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, early Monday morning, September 5, 2016, in NY.
“It’s my first match on the centre court, against Rafa”, Pouille who is still looking for his first ATP Tour title, said in an on-court interview.
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While he had a second-round walkover as Czech Jiri Vesely withdrew due to injury, he was leading 4-2 in his third-round match when Russian Mikhail Youzhny retired with a leg ailment.
