No. 3 Stan Wawrinka beat Juan Martin del Potro in four sets in the late match.
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He had won 26 of his previous 27 matches, including a second Wimbledon championship and a second Olympic gold medal, beating Nishikori in straight sets in the semifinals at Rio de Janeiro. I’m happy with the way I found solution in the third set to take advantage. Murray led two sets to one and held break points at 1-all in the fourth set at the time of the ruling.
She is bidding for her seventh title at Flushing Meadows and 23rd overall at a major tournament – both would be records for the Open era, which dates to 1968.
Next up for Williams is a match against Karolina Pliskova on Thursday.
The American group is led by fourth-seeded Amanda Anisimova, a 15-year-old who was a French Open junior finalist. It’s not really for me to say.
After four wrist surgeries, Del Potro was playing his first US Open since 2013.
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.
But the Swiss was looking the fresher as the clock ticked towards and then past 1am He took the third set 6-3, hitting twice as many muscular winners. Nishikori gathered himself after a light rain forced a closing of the roof at 3-3 in the second set that interrupted play for some 20 minutes and allowed him to meet with his team in the locker room.
A first-round U.S. Open women’s singles match will be looked into by tennis’ anti-corruption organization because of possible irregular betting patterns.
“It was really hard match”, Nishikori said.
Widmaier added that “betting alerts need to be investigated, but they are certainly not gospel” and do not “necessarily indicate any nefarious doings”. News stories displayed here appear in our category for Sports and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.com and The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization.
“I felt it was really quick and I was missing too much”, said Nishikori, reaching only his second Slam semifinal after his runner-up finish in New York City in 2014.
Andy Murray had earlier claimed to be having sleepless nights against the Japanese World No. 7 ahead of their quarterfinal encounter. Serving at only 55%, Kei was in a deep trouble, winning just 2 points on his second serve and giving Murray 5 break points, unable to find his range in the rallies.
But this time, 2014 U.S. Open runner-up Nishikori came through.
Tennis: Kei Nishikori ousts former US Open champion and no. 2 seed Andy Murray in the quarterfinals.
However, a return to his error-prone ways cost Nishikori the third set even as the opponents managed to break each other frequently. Today that wasn’t the case, with Nishikori firmly chose to step in and control the points, which he managed to do in the most of the match. Chair umpire Marija Cicak immediately halted play.
He also spoke to a tournament supervisor about it, pleading his case and saying, “That’s not fair”.
He wound up losing 12 of 14 points right after the let call and five games in a row to drop that set 6-1.
Pliskova entered the tournament as the only woman now ranked in the top 20 never to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam event. She defeated second-ranked Angelique Kerber in the final there.
The 6-foot-1 Pliskova has the most aces on the women’s tour this season, though that wasn’t how she dominated Wednesday. Williams has won seven of their last eight meetings.
The top seed will now face Czech player Karolína Plíšková who came through against Croatia’s Ana Konjuh, 6-2, 6-2.
6-1 in the first set.
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The roof on Arthur Ashe Stadium is now open under partly cloudy skies, with a chance of rain in the afternoon.
