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Pouille’s challenge too much for Nadal
NEW YORK: Lucas Pouille outlasted 14-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal in a five-set classic on Sunday to lead a trio of French men into the quarter-finals of
NEW YORK: Lucas Pouille outlasted 14-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal in a five-set classic on Sunday to lead a trio of French men into the quarter-finals of the US Open.
Pouille, 22 and ranked 25th in the world, lived up to the promise of his quarter-final run at Wimbledon, emerging from a roller-coaster ride with a 6-1, 2-6, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (6) triumph over the Spanish superstar.
The defeat leaves Nadal — forced out of the French Open third round with a wrist injury that also saw him miss Wimbledon — without at least one Grand Slam quarter-final appearance for the first time since he was a teenaged tour newcomer in 2004.
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 winner on 35 of 48 forays to the net — weren’t enough. The taut battle came down to the fifth-set tiebreaker and Nadal, trailing 3-6, showed his mettle by saving three match points — the third on Pouille’s serve.
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.
“I wanted to take my chance to be very aggressive, try to play with my forehand, and so that’s what I did at the (last) match point,” Pouille said.
Nadal acknowledged that his sloppy forehand was “a big mistake”. “But you are six-all in the tiebreak. I played the right point. I put myself in a position to have the winner and I had the mistake. That’s it. You cannot go crazy thinking about these kind of things. I fought until the end,” Nadal said. “There’s things I could do better, but I had the right attitude. I needed something more — it was not there today.”
Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic steamed into the quarterfinals of the US Open with a 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 victory against 84th-ranked Briton Kyle Edmund. Djokovic, who need a right elbow massage in the third set, will play ninth-seeded Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, a 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (7/9), 6-2 who beat American Jack Sock.
KERBER CLOSES IN
Angelique Kerber won a battle of Grand Slam champions when the second seed powered her way into the quarter-finals with a 6-3 7-5 win over Petra Kvitova. By reaching the last eight Kerber has put herself in position to end Serena Williams’ long reign as world number one.
Williams, bidding for a record seventh US Open title, will now need to reach the final to have a chance of retaining top spot.
Kerber’s victory set up a last eight clash with Italy’s Roberta Vinci, last year’s surprise runner-up, who advanced with a 7-6(5) 6-2 win over Ukraine’s Lesia Tsurenko.
BOPANNA OUSTED
Rohan Bopanna and Gabriela Dabrowski lost in the quarterfinals of the mixed doubles on Sunday. The Indo-Canadian duo lost to the unseeded Colombian-German pair of Robert Farah and Anna-Lena Groenefeld 6-1, 2-6 8-10.
