New York — Francis Tiafoe’s vision was blurred by tears. He was thrilled – even vented – when the last point ended and he was stunned that, yes, he finished Rafael Nadal’s 22-game winning streak on Monday and reached the US Open quarter-finals for the first time.
“It felt like the world had stopped,” said Tiafoe. I couldn’t hear anything for a minute.
Tiafoe then found himself “lost in the locker room” when he saw that NBA star LeBron James had given him a Twitter shout-out.
“Brother,” said Tiafoe, “I was going crazy.”
What Tiafoe means the most is his 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over 22-time major champion Nadal in the fourth round at Flushing Meadows, though, as he was looking at his guest at Arthur Ash Books and finding out that his parents, Constant and Alvina, they were there.
“To see them try me beat Rafa Nadal – they saw me take big wins, but to beat these ‘Mount Rushmore’ guys? For them, I can’t imagine what was going through their heads,” said Tiafoe, 24. The 22-year-old American seed at the US Open. “I mean, today they will remember the rest of their lives.”
His parents immigrated to the United States from Sierra Leone in West Africa amid the civil war in the 1990s. They ended up in Maryland, where Constant helped build a junior tennis training center and then became a maintenance worker there; Frances said Alvina was “a nurse, working two jobs, working overtime during the night.” Born in 1998, Francis and his twin brother Franklin would soon be spending hour after hour as dad’s job, rackets at hand.
Perhaps one day, the dream is gone, a college scholarship will come from it.
“It wasn’t supposed to be anything like this,” Tiafoe said Monday night, hours after his biggest win.
American Frances Tiafoe celebrates after beating Spain’s Rafael Nadal, during the fourth round of the US Open, on Monday, September 5, 2022, in New York.
AP Photo/Julia Nichinson
He’s the youngest American man to reach this far at the US Open since Andy Roddick in 2006, but this wasn’t a case of a one-sided crowd supporting one. Nadal is as popular as in tennis and he heard a lot of support as the volume was raised after the retractable roof closed in the fourth set.
“That’s something you say to the children, the grandchildren: Yes, you have defeated Rafa,” said Tiafoe, with a big smile.
He served better than Nadal, seeded No. 2. And most surprisingly, he came back even better. He kept his cool, stayed in the moment and didn’t let the bets or the opponent get to him. Nadal, 36, from Spain, has won both of their previous games, and in every set he’s played as well.
“Well, the difference is easy,” Nadal said. “I played a bad game and he played a good game.” “In the end that’s it.”
The surprise came a day after Tiafoe followed on TV as his friend Nick Kyrgios “made an offer” and knocked out top seed and defender Daniil Medvedev. This makes this the first US Open without any of the top two seeded players making it to the quarter-finals since 2000, when top seed Andre Agassi knocked out in the second round and second-placed Gustavo Kuerten in the first round.
That was before Nadal and Novak Djokovic, who has won 21 Grand Slam titles, and Roger Federer, who has 20 titles, began to dominate men’s tennis. Djokovic, 35, did not participate in this US Open because he had not been vaccinated against COVID-19 and was not allowed to enter the United States; Federer, 41, underwent a series of operations on his right knee and the last time he played at Wimbledon was last year.
Now comes the inevitable questions of whether their era of excellence is coming to an end.
“It shows that the years are passing,” Nadal said. It is the circle of life.
Tiafoe now meets 9th seed Andrey Rublev, who beat 7th seed Kam Nuri 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 earlier on Monday.
It turned late Monday into early Tuesday when third seed Carlos Alcaraz beat 15th seed Marin Cilic 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 in a match that lasted 3 hours 54 minutes and ended. It’s 2:23 am
No. 11, Yannick Sener trailed by two games in the fifth set to defeat Ilya Ivashka 6-1, 5-7, 6-2, 4-6, 6-3.
Top seed, Iga Swiatek, moved on to her first quarterfinal at Flushing Meadows by returning to defeat Julie Niemeyer 2-6, 6-4, 6-0.
“I’m just proud that I haven’t given up hope,” Swiatek said.
The 21-year-old Poland will face another first-time US Open quarter-finalist: 8th seed Jessica Pegula, the top-ranked American, who advanced with a 6-3 6-2 victory over two-time Wimbledon winner Petra. Kvitova.
Sixth-placed Karolina Pliskova will next meet sixth-seeded Karolina Pliskova in the quarter-finals, facing sixth seed Arina Sabalenka.
Nadal won the Australian Open in January and the French Open in June. He then reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon in July before withdrawing from that tournament due to an abdominal muscle.
Only once in a month and a half has Nadal competed between leaving the All England Club and arriving in New York, winning four titles.
He modified his serve move, throwing the ball lower than he normally does so as not to put pressure on his midsection. There were plenty of signs on Monday that his serve wasn’t at his best: nine double faults, first serve percentage hovering around 50%, five breaks by Tiafoe.
Earlier in the tournament, he lost the first set of his first-round match. He did the same in the second round, when he accidentally cut the bridge of his nose and made himself dizzy when the rim of his racket tire bounced off the field and caught him in the face.
However, on Monday Nadal looked on the verge of turning things around when he broke early in the fourth set and advanced 3-1.
“Stay in him. Stay with him,” said Tiafoe to himself.
This ties into two main areas that Tiafoe owes to helping make him a stronger player lately: an improved match mentality and commitment to fitness.
“Rafa is at every point,” said Tiafoe. “I’ve known I have some dips in my game sometimes, where it’s like you’re watching (and thinking), ‘What’s that?!'”. “That was the thing for me, the intensity of the match.”
No worries now: He grabbed the last five games. The next break of the last came for a 4-3 advantage in the fourth set, when Nadal curled a backhand into the net, slashed Tiafoe back toward the touchline for the next turn, and raised his fist.
Fifteen minutes later, Tiafoe broke again, and it was over. This marks the latest significant step forward for Tiafoe, whose only previous trip to the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam came at the 2019 Australian Open – and ended in a loss to Nadal.
When Nadal’s final backhand found the net, Tiafoe threw his racket and put his hands on his head. He looked out over the stands—mom, dad, brother, girlfriend, Washington Wizards All-Star Bradley Beal and others—then sat down in his side chair and buried his face in a towel.
“It was raging,” said Tiafoe. “My heart was going at a thousand miles an hour. I was so excited. I was like, ‘Let me sit down.'” “Yeah, I’ve never felt anything like this in my life, honestly.”
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