NEW YORK: Lucas Pouille outlasted 14-time Grand Slam champion RafaelNadal in a five-set classic on Monday to lead a trio of French men into the quarter-finals of the US Open.
\nPouille, 22 and ranked 25th in the world, lived up to the promise of his quarter-final run at Wimbledon, emerging from a roller-coaster ride with a 6-1, 2-6, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (8\/6) triumph over the Spanish superstar.
\nThe defeat leaves Nadal — forced out of the French Open third round with a wrist injury that also saw him miss Wimbledon — without at least one Grand Slam quarter-final appearance for the first time since he was a teenaged tour newcomer in 2004.
\nPouille came out firing, pushing Nadal back with an array of deep groundstrokes and angled shots.
\nFifty-two winners from Nadal — whose attacking response saw him come out a winner on 35 of 48 forays to the net — weren\u00b4t enough.
\nThe taut battle came down to the fifth-set tiebreaker and Nadal, trailing 3-6, showed his mettle by saving three match points — the third on Pouille\u00b4s serve.
\nThen he smacked a forehand into the net to give Pouille one more chance and the French player pounced on it with a blazing forehand that kissed the sideline.
\n“I wanted to take my chance to be very aggressive, try to play with my forehand, and so that\u00b4s what I did at the (last) match point,” Pouille said.
\nNadal acknowledged that his sloppy forehand was “a big mistake”.
\n“But you are six-all in the tiebreak. I played the right point. I put myself in a position to have the winner and I had the mistake. That\u00b4s it. You cannot go crazy thinking about these kind of things.
\n“The problem is arriving at six-all in the fifth, I should be winning before,” said Nadal, who opened the fifth set with a break but couldn\u00b4t hold onto it, dropping his own serve in the eighth to make it 4-4 and set the stage for the tiebreaker.
\n“I fought until the end,” Nadal said. “There\u00b4s things I could do better, but I had the right attitude. I needed something more — it was not there today.”
\nThe four-hour, seven-minute contest entranced the crowd in Arthur Ashe stadium, where Pouille recalled admiring Nadal as a youngster.
\nPouille, who has now won three successive five-setters to reach the last eight, wasn\u00b4t intimidated by the massive Ashe stage, even though he ony practiced on it last year.
\n“I think it was the best atmosphere I played on a center court,” he said of the 22,000-seat cathedral of tennis.
\n“At the end it was full. Sometimes I couldn\u00b4t even hear myself when I was saying \u00b4Allez, allez, allez.\u00b4”
\nPouille next tackles 10th-seeded compatriot Gael Monfils, a 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 winner over Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis.
\nNinth-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga also advanced, downing Jack Sock, the last American man left in the draw, 6-3, 6-3, 6-7 (7\/9), 6-2.
\nIt\u00b4s the first time since 1947 that three French men have reached the quarter-finals of one Grand Slam.
\nThe 23-year-old Sock, seeded 26th, hadn\u00b4t faced a break point in surprising 2014 champion Marin Cilic in the third round.
\nAgainst Tsonga he mustered only five aces and was broken six times by the 2008 Australian Open runner-up, who has reached at least the semi-finals of every Grand Slam except this one.
\nTsonga next faces world number one and defending champion Novak Djokovic, who powered past 84th-ranked Kyle Edmund of Britain 6-2, 6-1, 6-4.
\nEdmund looked thoroughly out-classed until he managed to put together a run of three straight games in the third set that included two breaks of Djokovic\u00b4s serve.
\nBut the Serb star, who received on-court treatment on his right arm — just as he did in the first round against Jerzy Janowicz — regrouped quickly and closed out the match by breaking Edmund at love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK: Lucas Pouille outlasted 14-time Grand Slam champion RafaelNadal in a five-set classic on Monday to lead a trio of French men into the quarter-finals of the US Open. Pouille, 22 and ranked 25th in the world, lived up to the promise of his quarter-final run at Wimbledon, emerging from a roller-coaster ride with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n