After reaching his maiden Grand Slam quarter-final at the 2011 US Open, John Isner went 25 majors without returning to the last eight. Now, the American has done so twice in a row.
Isner, who advanced to the Wimbledon semi-finals two months ago, beat former World No. 3 Milos Raonic 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 on Sunday to make the quarter-finals of the US Open for the second time.
The best season of the 33-year-old’s career continues to get better. He earned his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title five months ago in Miami. And then at SW19, he battled into the last four of a major for the first time, before losing 26-24 to Kevin Anderson in an epic fifth set.
Isner has now won four consecutive FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings against Raonic, taking a 5-1 lead in their rivalry. Entering the match, the Canadian held a better fifth-set record (9-6) compared to his opponent (10-18). But that didn’t matter as day turned to night in Flushing Meadows.
The No. 11 seed, who also came from a set down to eliminate Raonic at Wimbledon earlier this year, broke serve four times to advance after three hours and eight minutes. On the third break point he faced in his opening service game of the decider, Raonic double faulted, and Isner did not let him off the hook the rest of the way, breaking for the second time in the set to clinch his victory.
Entering the match, Isner led the tournament in percentage of service games won, having captured 97 per cent (63/65) of them through three rounds. But astonishingly, Raonic broke the home favourite in his first service game of the match. And as you’d expect in a battle of two of the biggest servers in tennis, Raonic held throughout the opener to earn the first set.
And perhaps even more surprisingly, that became a theme in their clash. The players had combined to hold 109 of their 114 service games in the six total matches they had played, meaning they were broken a combined five times. Yet there were five six breaks of serve across the five sets played.
Isner will next face 2009 champion Juan Martin del Potro or World No. 20 Borna Coric. If he should beat the winner of that match, he will become the first American man to reach the semi-finals of the US Open since Andy Roddick made the final here in 2006.
Raonic was trying to reach the quarter-finals in New York for the first time. If he would have beaten the American, the 27-year-old would have become the 12th active player to reach the last eight at all four majors.
from Tennis - ATP World Tour https://ift.tt/2MLNtl6
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