Answering destiny’s call

PTI

New York, September 6

Ben Shelton is still just 20, still new to this whole professional tennis thing. He is equipped with a tremendously good serve, but don’t think he can’t come through in other ways when it matters the most.

On a muggy night in which, yes, he hit 14 aces but also hit 11 double faults, Shelton used one blink-and-you-missed-it booming return to save a set point in the pivotal tiebreaker and reached his first Grand Slam semifinal by edging Frances Tiafoe 6-2 3-6 7-6(7) 6-2 at the US Open in a back-and-forth contest filled with huge hitting by both.

“Sometimes you’ve got to shut off the brain, close your eyes and just swing,” Shelton said about his forehand return winner off an 83 mph second serve that prevented Tiafoe from taking a two-sets-to-one lead. “Some may say clutch, but I don’t know about all that.”

Tiafoe’s take? “An unbelievable return from way back there,” he acknowledged. “Come on. That’s unheard-of stuff.”

It was a good day for Novak Djokovic on Tuesday, as he claimed his spot in a record 47th Grand Slam semifinal, but an even better one for the United States with Coco Gauff getting through to the last-four.

The only thing that kept it from being a perfect tennis Tuesday for home fans was Djokovic beating Taylor Fritz 6-1 6-4 6-4 to stay on course for a fourth US Open title that would see him match Margaret Court’s record haul of 24 Grand Slams.

With the temperature once again nudging towards 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), 19-year-old Gauff warmed up the Arthur Ashe crowd by speeding past Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko 6-0 6-2 to become the youngest American to reach the US Open women’s semifinals since Serena Williams in 2001.

If Gauff is to reach her first US Open final she will need to get past tricky Czech Karolina Muchova, who was a 6-0 6-3 winner over Romanian Sorana Cirstea. — Agencies

Bopanna-Ebden pair reaches semifinals

New York: Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden saved seven set points in the opening set before downing Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow to move to the US Open men’s doubles semifinals, their second straight last-four appearance in Grand Slams this year. The sixth-seeded Indo-Australian pair beat the American combo 7-6(10) 6-1 in the quarterfinals of the hardcourt Major. Bopanna and Ebden had reached the semifinals of the Wimbledon Championships where they had lost to Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski.

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