New York (AFP)
Alexander Zverev and Jennifer Brady qualified for the first time in their careers in the quarter-finals of the US Open on Sunday before Novak Djokovic tried to reach this stage of the competition for the 12th time.
Last year, the Serb abandoned in the 8th against Stan Wawrinka for a left shoulder injury.
This time, it is the Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta (27th) who will be on his way.
The first to qualify for the quarterfinals for the 2020 edition was American Jennifer Brady.
The 41st world outclassed the German Angelique Kerber (23rd) 6-1, 6-4, but she injured her groin.
The bandage at the start of the second set allowed her to close the game, but the injury could hamper her in the long term.
"I had a great first set," she said.
"In the second, I focused on every point and I was frustrated to feel that pain. I'm very happy to have won in 2 sets," she commented.
“I knew what I had to do when I got onto the court, I had a really good game plan. I wanted to be aggressive as soon as possible and stay ahead of the score. I didn't want to let her wander from right to left and I succeeded, ”she explained.
- Zverev flies over -
After a 67-minute battle for this only second set, she eliminated the former World No. 1 on her second match point.
At 25, she will play a Grand Slam quarter-final for the first time against Kazakhe Yulia Putintseva (35th).
Zverev had already reached the quarterfinals of a Major, but it was at Roland Garros and Australia (where he even went to the semi-finals this year), never at the US Open.
It is now done after his demonstration (6-2, 6-2, 6-1) against the Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (99th) who was playing his first US Open.
Unlike his third round against Adrian Mannarino, where he put a set to enter his match, certainly in a difficult context the game having started three hours late after the Frenchman's setbacks with the health authorities, Zverev was impregnable entry point for Spanish.
The German ruled without resistance, inflicting 18 aces, 38 winning strokes and converting 7 of his 10 break points.
- Babos is crying -
A walk before facing in the quarterfinals the Croatian Borna Coric (32nd) or the Australian Jordan Thompson (63rd).
In addition, out of the New York bubble, the Hungarian Timea Babos displayed her distress after her eviction from the doubles tournament on Saturday following the ban on her partner Kristina Mladenovic to leave her room for health reasons.
"I'm at home. I'm sitting in my kitchen and crying… I'm just starting to realize what happened and I don't understand. It's terribly unfair, I don't see any reasonable reason. so that it turned out like this, ”she wrote on social media.
"I thought a lot about whether I should go or not (at the US Open, editor's note), I was asking myself a lot of questions. But I'm an athlete, I want to compete (...) They deprived us of a chance to lift a Grand Slam trophy, not to mention the material side and the psychological damage! But why? I don't know, I don't understand ... really ", she concludes.
Associated with Mladenovic, Babos won the Australian Open in 2018 and Roland Garros in 2019.
Following Benoît Paire's positive coronavirus test, 7 players, including Mladenovic, were subjected to a reinforced protocol providing in particular for almost total isolation and which should allow them to play the US Open as long as they remained negative.
© 2020 AFP