Del Potro wins in epic fightback
Juan Martin del Potro’s stay at the US Open really should be long over. It nearly was.
The 2009 champion at Flushing Meadows somehow kept staving off defeat in the fourth round against No 6 seed Dominic Thiem in New York yesterday.
The top-seeded woman had even less trouble than Nadal did Monday: 2016 runner-up Karolina Pliskova beat 91stranked American Jennifer Brady 6-1, 6-0.
Pliskova needed to deal with a match point for her previous opponent, but there was no such trouble this time in a match that lasted all of 47 minutes.
‘‘Sometimes you just need to have some of those matches where you can just really get through it. You don’t even know why, but the game improves so much,’' Pliskova said.
She leads the tour in aces this season and showed why that stroke is so good by taking 22 of 24 points on her first serve against Brady.
In the quarterfinals, Pliskova will take on No 20 CoCo Vandeweghe, who beat Lucie Safarova 6-4 7-6 (2) to become one of four US woman in the next round. Venus Williams and Sloane Stephens advanced on Monday.
Estonia’s Kaia Kanepi beat Daria Kasatkina 6-4 6-4 to become the first qualifier in 36 years to reach the quarterfinals.
The 32-year-old Estonian is ranked 418th after missing much of the past two years with problems in the soles of both feet and a virus known as a precursor to mononucleosis.
She will play American Madison Keys in the last eight.