Nadal advances in US Open in straight sets

Nadal has won four of his 22 Grand Slam titles at the U.S. Open, most recently in 2019, the last time he entered the hard-court tournament.

New York:Rafael Nadal made it through his latest U.S. Open match in one piece and knocked off Richard Gasquet 6-0, 6-1, 7-5. The No. 2 seed Nadal had cut himself on the bridge of his nose with his own racket in his second-round victory. There was little that slowed him down Saturday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Nadal has won four of his 22 Grand Slam titles at the U.S. Open, most recently in 2019, the last time he entered the hard-court tournament. Nadal, who won his 30th night match at Arthur Ashe Stadium, said his nose felt fine during the match. Nadal has won 34 straight sets against Gasquet and needed just over 2 hours to move into the fourth round of the U.S. Open. He'll play American player Frances Tiafoe on Monday. Tiafoe, the first American man since Mardy Fish in 2010-12 to get to the U.S. Open's fourth round in three consecutive years.

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Nadal has a 2-0 career mark against Tiafoe. Andrey Rublev won the final point in a match that lasted more than four hours and beat No. 19 Denis Shapovalov 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (3), 6-4, 7-6 (10-7). The ninth-seeded Rublev is set to play No. 7 Cameron Norrie in the fourth round. Rublev hit only only 38 winners and had nine aces to Shapovalov's 76 winners had 23 aces. Rublev needed five match points to finally win the match. The Russian collapsed on the ground and buried his face in his hands in exhaustion as the grandstands crowd went wild following one of the best matches in the first week of the tournament.

Rublev advanced to the U.S. Open quarterfinals in 2017 and 2020 and also lost in the fourth round in 2019. Carlos Alcaraz has become became the youngest man since Pete Sampras in 1989 and '90 to reach the fourth round in consecutive U.S. Opens. The 19-year-old Alcaraz knocked off Jenson Brooksby 6-3, 6-3, 6-3. Alcaraz reached the quarterfinals last year at 18.

Alcaraz was down 3-0 in the third set until he won six straight games to take off and top Brooksby. Brooksby was 20 last year when he went to the fourth round, where Novak Djokovic eliminated him in four sets. Alcaraz, always hustling, on the move, appeared to blow out a pair of sneakers and needed a change of shoes during the match. He gave away another pair of sneakers to fans in celebration of the victory. Alcaraz advances to play the winner of Marin Cilic vs. Daniel Evans.

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Jessica Pegula reached the fourth round at the U.S. Open for the first time by beating qualifier Yuan Yue 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-0 in Arthur Ashe Stadium. The eighth-seeded Pegula wasted a chance to close it out when she held a match point in the tiebreaker but rolled through the third set in a half-hour.

Pegula, a 28-year-old American whose parents own the NFL's Buffalo Bills and NHL's Buffalo Sabres, finished with nearly twice as many winners as Yuan, 35-18. Petra Kvitova erased a pair of match points and converted her fourth to edge Garbie Muguruza 5-7, 6-3, 7-6 (12-10) in a showdown between two-time major champions.

Kvitova reached the fourth round at Flushing Meadows for the seventh time. She last made it to the U.S. Open quarterfinals in 2017. She kept coming back after dropping the first set, after trailing 5-2 in the third, after being a point from defeat twice at 6-5.

AP