Moment of silence

Nadal rolls to win in hushed Ashe

THE ONLY noise inside Arthur Ashe Stadium that Rafael Nadal had to contend with on Labor Day was the guttural grunt that he uttered after every swing of his racket.

With blue skies overhead, an open roof, a heavily partisan but subdued crowd, and not much resistance from his Ukrainian opponent, Alexandr Dolgopolov, the world No. 1 men’s tennis player cruised to the U.S. Open quarterfinals with a straight sets victory Monday — 6-2, 6-4, 6-1.

“I think I played a solid match, obviously. Not many mistakes. I didn’t see the statistics, so I don’t know how many unforced errors I had, but my feeling is not many,” Nadal said after the match.

The 31-year-old Spaniard had just 11 unforced errors Monday afternoon, and he needed only one hour, 41 minutes to dispatch Dolgopolov, who said afterward that the shade covering part of the court during the first set was “a problem” for him.

“I was more comfortable when the sun was covering the whole court,” said Dolgopolov.

One guy who could serve as a potentially huge hurdle for Nadal if he is to win his first Open since 2013, is No. 3 seed Roger Federer. The two players could meet in the semifinals, but first Nadal, who won his 10th French Open title earlier this year and has 15 career Grand Slam singles titles, must beat 19-year-old Russian Andrey Rublev in the quarters. Nadal refused to look past the teenage upstart when asked about possibly facing Federer this week.

“You can ask me about that in two days if I am here with victory, and I will answer you with a lot of great pleasure if that happens,” Nadal said. “I will be very happy to be in that semifinal if that happens.”

That was about as prickly as Nadal gets, and his only other gripe came after his opening-round victory last week, when he bemoaned the crowd noise while playing under a closed Ashe roof during inclement weather. Monday, there were no precipitation issues, and although fans packed nearly every seat at Ashe Stadium, cheers were scant except for the occasional “C’mon Rafa!”

Unlike his second- and thirdround matches, which each took four sets, there seemed to be little doubt about the outcome of Nadal’s fourthrounder against Dolgopolov. Dressed in hot pink and white, including pink soles on his sneakers, Nadal needed 31 minutes to win the first set. Dolgopolov made it interesting in the second set, holding serve in the seventh game to go up 4-3.

But after Nadal tied it 4-4, he broke Dolgopolov in the ninth game, and then won the set with a 109 mph ace, one of only four aces Nadal had in the match. Dolgopolov served in the first game of the third set, but despite making a nifty drop shot to go up 40-30, he hit a return long for deuce, and then flubbed a backhand to get broken by the Spaniard.

Nadal lost his only game in the third set when he whacked a backhand return into the net. Dolgopolov, who was serving in the decisive seventh game, saved match point four times before his backhand sailed into the net to give Nadal the victory. Nadal now has a lifetime 7-2 record against Dolgopolov.

Now Nadal must get past Rublev, who is 12 years his junior and who beat Belgian David Goffin in straight sets Monday at Louis Armstrong Stadium, 7-5, 7-6 (5), 6-3.

COCO TO QUARTERS: American CoCo Vandeweghe advanced to the quarterfinals with a straight sets victory over Lucie Safarova while Madison Keys beat No. 4 Elina Svitolina in three sets.