High fence in one fourth – Sport – Kommersant

The tenth day of the US Open, which continues in New York, was the last for Andrei Rublev. Losing in three games to the 26th racket of the world American Francis Tiafoe, the Russian finished his performance at the tournament. The quarter-final stage at the Grand Slam tournaments remains insurmountable for Rublev, a member of the global elite who has won 11 Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) titles and climbed to fifth position in the world rankings. He failed to reach the semi-finals for the sixth time in a row.

Before the start of the match between Andrei Rublev and Francis Tiafoe, fans of tennis statistics had two calculations on hand. One was for a Russian who has lost all five of his Grand Slam quarterfinals over the past five years: two each at the US Open and Roland Garros, plus one at the Australian Open. The other had an even more solid temporal background. The fact is that the last semi-final of the US Open with the participation of an American dated back to 2006, after which the four hosts of the tournament – Andy Roddick (three times), Mardy Fish, John Isner (twice) and Sam Querrey suffered seven defeats at this stage. But now one of these two series must have been interrupted.

As a result, the American one was interrupted. To the delight of the overwhelming majority of fans who were in the bowl of the Arthur Ashe court, their compatriot won – 7:6 (7:3), 7:6 (7:0), 6:4 in 2 hours and 36 minutes. And in hot pursuit it is difficult to unambiguously name the main reason for this. Probably, Rublev will be right if, as has happened before, he says that the matter is in psychology – more precisely, in excessive desire, to jump, in the end, through the tall quarter-final fence that has stood in his way. The same desire, which at decisive moments fettered movement. Those critics who again note the monotony of the Russian’s tactics will also be right. After all, that high level of attacking play on the back line, due to which Rublev outplayed Briton Cameron Norrie before this, was not enough in this case, and he could not offer anything new to his opponent.

But one cannot fail to pay tribute to Francis Tiafoe. As in his previous match with Nadal, this dark-skinned, moderately artistic athlete with perfect posture and original facial expressions showed an excellent game. He prepared a real delicacy for tennis gourmets, the taste of which was regularly exacerbated by a seasoning rare in modern times in the form of the most elegant, but fatal for an opponent, touching the ball near the net. There, the American achieved a 75 percent success, winning 31 points out of 41, which is the highest indicator. For comparison, Rublev took the lead only 11 times and only 5 – successfully. In this case, the numbers are too eloquent to ignore.

Ease in the performance of technical elements, superimposed on self-confidence (and this inner state in such important matches is rarely caught even by the most outstanding masters) allowed Tiafoe to brilliantly hold two tie-breaks, and in the middle of the third installment, for the first and last time in the entire match take someone else’s pitch. Rublev, who tried his best to the last, was humanly sorry. But in the final game on someone else’s pitch, frankly, he already gave the impression of being doomed.

In general, the Russian played a good tournament for himself, during which, in particular, in the third round, a very important and emotional victory over Canadian Denis Shapovalov was won in a tie-break in the fifth game. But the semi-final stage at the majors is still unconquered for Rublev. And in order to finally conquer her and go even further, he, along with the Spanish coach Fernando Vicente, needs to change something in the training system. Because while from the outside it seems that a very young and incredibly hardworking athlete is in the same creative dead end, which, in fact, many tennis talents get into from time to time. And from which Francis Tiafoe recently got out, having made a noticeable step forward in recent months with the help of his coach, the South African Wayne Ferreira, well known to Russian age fans for joint performances in doubles with Yevgeny Kafelnikov.

Evgeny Fedyakov