For the third consecutive day, one of the top-seeded men or a heavy favorite exited the 2022 U. S. Open. In a match that began Tuesday night and ended in the small hours Wednesday morning, Nick Kyrgios lost to Karen Khachanov of Russia in five sets in a duel between two of the hardest hitters in the game, but also two players whose minds have often gotten in the way of the success that so many predicted for them when they were teenagers. Khachanov won the three-hour, 39-minute scrap, 7-5, 4-6, 7-5, 6-7, 6-4. Kyrgios looked to have the momentum after taking the fourth-set tiebreaker, but he lost his serve in the opening game of the fifth set and never recovered.“Crazy match, ” Khachanov, the No. 27 seed, said in his on-court interview. He’ll face Casper Ruud of Norway, the No. 5 seed, in the semifinals. For Kyrgios, the talented but temperamental Australian, the loss came two nights after he eliminated the top seed and the defending champion, Daniil Medvedev, another Russian. On Monday, Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam singles champion, lost in fourth sets to Frances Tiafoe, a rising American. Nadal’s loss was less of a surprise than Medvedev’s, especially because few would have been shocked if the two had met in the finals had they landed on opposite sides of the draw. The surprise was how efficiently the 23rd-seeded Kyrgios had steam-rolled Medvedev, who is widely recognized as the world’s top hardcourt player, in the third and fourth sets. The performance was among the best matches Kyrgios, 27, has ever played at a Grand Slam tournament, if not the best. In those final two sets, in game after game, Kyrgios all but hit Medvedev off the court, except when he was confusing and frustrating Medvedev with his drop shots and touch volleys. There was little doubt when the match ended that if Kyrgios could continue playing at that level, it was unlikely anyone in the field would be capable of stopping him from winning his first Grand Slam singles title in a career marked by wild swings of brilliance and blowups. The only consistencies in Kyrgios’s game and the mind that rules it though are their unpredictability, and how irresistible tennis fans find it. Goran Ivanisevic, the 2001 Wimbledon champion who now coaches Novak Djokovic, has described Kyrgios as a “tennis genius. ” But just when it appears that Kyrgios has everything locked in — his massive serve, his blistering forehand, his deceptively quick movement, his breathtaking touch, his combustible temper — something goes awry. Against Khachanov, the inability to find anything close to the near-perfection he had reached against Medvedev doomed him. Kyrgios was just slightly off, and against a far inferior opponent. Shots that normally burn the lines drifted beyond them. Shots that usually zip over the net on a wire slammed into the tape, or even the middle of the net in the lesser moments. He struggled all night to crack the code of Khachanov’s serve, especially on his rare chances to break it.


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Article Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/sports/tennis/kyrgios-khachanov-us-open-quarterfinals.html


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