Tiafoe, 21, buffs up his Next Gen credentials
MELBOURNE, Australia – The Australian Open has been a career builder for Frances Tiafoe, who celebrated his
21st birthday on the same day he became a Grand Slam tournament quarterfinalist.
Two days later, Tiafoe’s fabulous Australian Open story came to a conclusion with his continued inability to conquer a top five-ranked player.
Nevertheless, considering the talent and desire he showed throughout his stay in Melbourne, it seems safe to expect it’s only a matter of time before he will be challenging for his own top spot in the rankings.
Second seed Rafael Nadal was Tiafoe’s fifth shot at upsetting this level of player, but he couldn’t prevent the Spanish sensation from taking his place in the semifinals with a 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 win.
Nadal will be competing in his 30th Grand Slam semifinal when he faces
14th-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas, a 20year-old in his first Grand Slam semifinal after defeating Nadal’s countryman,
22nd-ranked Roberto Bautista Agut 7-5,
4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-2) earlier Tuesday. “A few days ago I said they can wait a little bit,” said Nadal, laughing, about these young upstarts trying to infiltrate the top of the game. “But it looks today like they don’t want to wait; Frances in the quarterfinals, Stefanos now in the semifinals.”
The men’s ATP is making a conscien- tious effort to highlight the younger talent on the tour, referring to them as the Next Gen players.
The tour has had a separate Next Gen year-end final the past two years with Tsitsipas winning the trophy over Australian Alex De Minaur while Tiafoe didn’t advance out of the round-robin stage.
“It’s just nice to be a part of this group,” Tiafoe said of his Next Gen distinction. “We’re definitely paying attention to each other. We don’t want to do worse than the other person. Kind of pissed that Tsitsipas is in and I’m not. It is kind of what it is.
“I think the game’s definitely heading that way (in the Next Gen direction). Rafa and these cats ain’t getting any younger, you know what I’m saying?”
Tiafoe’s biggest mistake in the match was giving the 17-time Grand Slam champion an immediate advantage in all three sets. Tiafoe surrendered his first service game in each set and could never recover.
“When you’re playing a guy that good, you can’t even get some holding pressure on him, it’s tough,” Tiafoe said. “Again, it was tough. My body was definitely hurting. I’m more or less happy to be done.”
Nadal extended his winning streak against American opponents in the Grand Slams to 21 matches. He last fell to an American in the 2005 US Open, where James Blake won their thirdround encounter. Overall, Nadal has a 25-2 record when playing an American in one of the four majors.
Nadal closed down his 2018 season when he abandoned his semifinal match against Juan Martin del Potro in the second set at the US Open with a right knee injury. In November, he had minor surgery on his right ankle. And as recently as this month Nadal withdrew from the Brisbane tournament to nurse a thigh strain.
But Nadal is playing top-flight tennis in the Australian Open, where he has moved through to the semifinals without dropping a set.
This marks the 16th time in Nadal’s career that he reached a major quarterfinal without the loss of a set and sixth time in the Australian Open. He’s now reached a Grand Slam semifinal in straight sets on 11 occasions, including in 2008 and 2009 at Melbourne Park.