Three sets, and only one of them close
Alexander Zverev has now played every one of his matches at this US Open after dark, and the pattern held again overnight on Arthur Ashe. The top seed took the first two sets against Luciano Darderi 6-2, 6-2 in a little over an hour, then had to work through a tie-break to close it out 7-6 and reach the quarter-finals.
Darderi, seeded 21st, had the crowd for a spell in the third. He never had the baseline exchanges. Zverev has spent this fortnight winning long rallies rather than short ones, and the Italian had no way of shortening them.
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The arithmetic of his fortnight
Look at how the German got here and the scoreline reads oddly. His opening round against Lorenzo Sonego went five sets. His second, against Quentin Halys, also went five and finished at 2:15am. That is 10 sets and roughly seven hours of tennis before he had won two matches.
Since then it has been three sets against Alejandro Tabilo, three against Darderi. Whatever was wrong in week one appears to have been sorted out somewhere around the middle Saturday, and it has come at the point in the draw where the margins usually tighten rather than widen.
An open half, and a warning
The men’s draw has lost most of the names that would normally block his path. Jannik Sinner withdrew before the tournament with a knee problem. Novak Djokovic went out in the first round to Mariano Navone in five sets. Carlos Alcaraz is alive on the other side, playing his first event in four months after a wrist injury.
That leaves Zverev as the man most of New York expects to reach Sunday, with Botic van de Zandschulp standing in the quarter-final. The Dutchman came through Arthur Gea 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 7-6, 6-4 in a night that ran past the point where anyone was counting. Zverev has already said publicly that this is Van de Zandschulp’s favourite tournament, which is one way of telling people not to write the scoreline in advance.
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