DRAMA NOT ENOUGH TO DETER CAM IN SLAM BID
CAM NORRIE’S phlegmatic nature served him well last night as he ignored histrionics from the other end of the court to make the last 16 of the US Open.
The British No1 refused to be distracted by the talented but fiery Danish teenager Holger Rune and once again has improved on his previous best result at a Slam.
Norrie calmly saw off his 19-year-old opponent 7-5, 6-4, 6-1 and was left awaiting the winner of the clash between Canada’s Denis Shapovalov and Russia’s Andrey Rublev.
Dan Evans was hoping to join him last night as he took on the 2014 champion Marin Cilic.
It will be the first time that Norrie has made the fourth round in New York, following on from his semifinal showing at Wimbledon. Not since Andy Murray achieved the feat in 2016 has Britain had a male representative in the second week at the tournament.
While the scoreline was convincing it was a slightly scrappy passage,
partly due to the feisty conduct of the temperamental Rune, who complained to the umpire about the aborted ball tosses of the Brit in the wind.
His main gripe was that Norrie was going right up to the shot clock limit before serving, at one point asking: ‘So you don’t think he does it on purpose?’.
Yet the serve was getting delivered within the 25-second limit between points, so it was difficult to see what was upsetting the young Dane, who has a reputation for his stormy temperament and undulating performance.
Norrie alluded to this afterwards, saying: ‘Holger is not easy. He can go through matches where he is playing pretty passively and then he goes and hits very aggressively, so you’ve to be ready for anything.
‘I stayed a lot calmer than he did throughout a lot of big moments in the match. I managed to stay tough in the first set and again when I was serving for the second set.’
Norrie knew he could rely on his famed durability to eventually gain the ascendancy.
‘My goal today was to get to two hours and then we start the match from there,’ he said.
‘Literally when it hit two hours, I broke to go 2-1 up in the third set, pointed to Facu (Lagones, his coach) and was like: “All right, now the match starts”.
‘He (Rune) seemed to die a little bit at the end. I don’t know what was going on with him.’
The gap in maturity between the pair showed when Norrie made a horrendous volleying error at 5-4 when he was trying to close out the first set and was broken.
But he immediately put that behind him to win the next two games and did not look back from that point.
Norrie has become one of the most dependable players on the ATP Tour and this was his 44th victory of the season. By improving on his first-round exit of a year ago, he is bolstering his ranking and is close to overtaking the absent Novak Djokovic as world No7.
Even more encouraging for Norrie is that he is yet to be at his best this fortnight, but has still managed to get through the first week without dropping a set.
Nick Kyrgios set up the match of the fourth round when he defeated American challenger JJ Wolf 6-4, 6-2, 6-3. He now takes on defending champion Daniil Medvedev for a place in the quarter-finals.
The Russian was banned from Wimbledon, where Kyrgios made the final and, despite coming in expecting more of himself, the Australian has made it to the last 16 with few dramas by his standards.
In the women’s event, Petra Kvitova won the battle of former Wimbledon champions, beating Garbine Muguruza 5-7, 6-3, 7-6 to make the fourth round.
She will face the eighth seed, American Jessica Pegula, who came through a 70-minute second set to see off Chinese world No142 Yue Yuan 6-2, 6-7, 6-0.
I stayed a lot calmer than he did in a lot of big moments in the match