Under the lights of New York, Frances Tiafoe beat Rafael Nadal, with the Spaniard racing towards the Grand Slam number 23 and first place in the ATP ranking.
Tiafoe is the only tennis player able to beat the Spaniard in a Major in 2022 and also guarantees Ruud and Alcaraz the chance to compete for the top of the ranking. With a sumptuous, at times surreal performance, the American tennis player highlights all the limits of a half-straight Nadal, rather predictable from the baseline and beyond frightened by the American’s surrender in response.
That despite a hole in the second set, he unexpectedly restores the hierarchies and in the fourth set he even slips a series of 4 consecutive games from 3-1 Nadal, apparently back in the game. Tiafoe thus closes at 6-4 4-6 6-4 6-4 and obviously reaches for the first time in his career the quarter-finals on the blue brick of Flushing Meadows.
You finish the season in the Grand Slams for the Majorcan, who can still hope to console himself with the first position: fate, now, is in the hands of the two chasing. Waiting for Tiafoe in the quarter-finals isĀ Andrey Rublev, Cameron Norrie’s executioner in three sets.