Seeded 12th, gone in round two
Four hours of tennis, and the seeding meant nothing by the end of it. Casper Ruud is out of the US Open, beaten in the second round by Raphael Collignon 6-4, 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5. The Belgian, who arrived in New York without a seeding next to his name, closed it out just before 10.30pm French time.
Ruud started well enough. He took the opener 6-4 and looked settled. Then Collignon reeled off two sets by the same 6-3 score and the whole thing flipped. The Norwegian dug out the fourth to force a decider, only to be broken late in the fifth.
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Four years since that final, and still stuck
Ruud reached the US Open final here in 2022. Alcaraz beat him that day with the world No 1 ranking sitting on the outcome. Since then the New York results have thinned out, and a second-round loss to an unseeded opponent is about as blunt a reading as the draw can give.
For Collignon the maths run the other way. This is his first third round at a Grand Slam. He stayed physically intact through five sets and won the points that mattered, including the stretch at 5-5 in the decider when Ruud had just clawed his way back on level terms.
Tuesday night thinned out the top half
Ruud was not alone. Brandon Nakashima, seeded 30th, went out to Swiss qualifier Jerome Kym after four and a half hours on court. Holger Rune lost in five to Jan-Lennard Struff. Three seeds, one evening.
The very top held. Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz came through their matches without trouble, and Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe did the same. The draw ahead of them just got a lot lighter.
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