Kei Nishikori, of Japan, reacts during his match with Andy Murray, of the United Kingdom, during the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, in NY.
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The world number two, who sat out the quarter-final in Serbia in July following his Wimbledon triumph, has been named in a provisional five-man team alongside Kyle Edmund, Dan Evans, Jamie Murray and Dom Inglot.
The World No.1 needed just 68 minutes on Arthur Ashe Stadium court to overwhelm the 52nd-ranked Shvedova and surpass Roger Federer on the all-time list of matches won at tennis’s four blue riband events.
With the match seemingly headed for a fifth-set tiebreaker, Murray’s serve deserted him and he committed just his third double fault. “I would have loved to have gone further, but it wasn’t to be today”. I never do that. “Two years ago, I made the final for the first time in the Grand Slams”.
Murray’s last Davis Cup action came against Japan in March, when he edged an epic five-setter against Kei Nishikori to win the tie.
Staring defeat in the face Kei Nishikori battled back from a 3-2 set deficit and a near collapse with a 4-3 lead in the fifth set to defeat Andy Murray and reach the U.S. Open semifinals.
He is narrowly ahead of Edmund in the rankings and matched his Wimbledon showing by reaching the third round in NY, where he held match point before losing in five sets to world number three Stan Wawrinka.
“I once hit a 145mph serve in San Jose but they recalibrated the machine the next day so it didn’t count. I’m just happy that it’s now and that it came”, said the 24-year-old Pliskova, who is participating in the 18th Grand Slam tournament of her career.
“I don’t really think about sending messages, purely because I know how much can change in a couple of days”.
Nishikori broke for 1-0 in the deciding set and backed it up for 2-0 before Murray stopped a seven-game losing streak to hold.
That didn’t’ last long, though, as the 6th seed finally showed his abilities on return, breaking Murray at love in game 6 to level the score at 3-3, before the pause in game 7 caused by the rain that forced the roof to get closed.
Karlovic fired 21 aces in the contest but Nishikori’s 44 winners and a miserly seven unforced errors proved the key.
The sixth-seeded Nishikori will meet either double grand slam victor Stan Wawrinka or 2009 US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro in the last four at Flushing Meadows.
The 142nd-ranked del Potro was leading eighth-seeded Dominic Thiem 6-3, 3-2 when the Austrian retired with a right knee injury.
This is one of my favourite Grand Slams.
He has only dropped a single set since arriving in NY which came back in the third round against Paolo Lorenzi.
Del Potro is back at the US Open after a three-year absence.
“You never want to win a match like this”. Definitely I would say to 4-1.
The Ukrainian, who arrived in NY on a seven-match losing streak, battled back from 2-4 and 3-5 down in the third set to force a tiebreaker.
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Nishikori went along with his business quietly and efficiently as Murray was losing the plot, the underdog winning five games in a row to turn 1-1 into 6-1 and set the match up for a decider.
