{"id":17754,"date":"2025-08-29T09:04:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T09:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=17754"},"modified":"2025-08-29T09:04:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T09:04:03","slug":"late-night-paul-battles-through-at-us-open-in-146-am-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=17754","title":{"rendered":"Late-night Paul battles through at US Open in 1:46 am finish"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Tommy Paul survived a brutal five-set epic that finished at 1:46 am to fight his way past Nuno Borges and into the third round of the US Open early Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The 14th-seeded American finally made it count after 4hr 45mins to pull through 7-6 (8\/6), 6-3, 5-7, 5-7, 7-5 in New York.<\/p>\n<p>Late-night finishes in tennis have been a recurring theme, especially at the Australian Open and the US Open, where Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner completed their 2022 quarter-final at 2:50 am.<\/p>\n<p>Paul could have had a comparatively early night with two match points in the third set, but he failed to take them and a newly energised Borges threatened to make him pay.<\/p>\n<p>With the time in the &#8220;city that never sleeps&#8221; ticking past 1:00 am and the Arthur Ashe Stadium mostly empty, the gruelling encounter went to a deciding fifth set.<\/p>\n<p>There was again nothing between them, with Portugal&#8217;s Borges &#8212; who is ranked 41 in the world &#8212; refusing to go away as he fought back from 3-0 down in the fifth.<\/p>\n<p>Paul finally sealed the deal at 1:46am with a thrilling rally on his third match point, the exhausted pair exchanging a warm embrace at the net after an attritional battle.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A little bit tired now, I&#8217;m sure we all are,&#8221; Paul told the spectators that remained until the end.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;First I want to say thank you to you guys for staying so late and supporting me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 28-year-old added: &#8220;Definitely cool to get a win.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He will play the 23rd-seeded Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan next.<\/p>\n<p>Zverev sweeps into US Open third round<\/p>\n<p>Alexander Zverev cruised into the third round of the US Open on Thursday with a straight-sets win over Britain&#8217;s Jacob Fearnley.<\/p>\n<p>Three-time Grand Slam runner-up Zverev eased past world number 60 Fearnley 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to book a date with Canadian 25th seed Felix Auger-Aliassime or Russia&#8217;s Roman Safiullin.<\/p>\n<p>Only Carlos Alcaraz has more than Zverev&#8217;s 45 match wins on the men&#8217;s circuit this season.<\/p>\n<p>Third seed Zverev has reached at least the quarter-finals in each of his last four trips to New York, where he finished runner-up in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have scooped the last seven Grand Slams together but Zverev is hoping to muscle in on their territory and claim an elusive first major.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m here to spoil the party. I&#8217;m going to try to do that,&#8221; said Zverev, who lost last year&#8217;s French Open final to Alcaraz and came second to Sinner in Melbourne in January.<\/p>\n<p>Sinner romps into US Open third round<\/p>\n<p>Jannik Sinner kept his bid to win back-to-back US Open titles firmly on track with an emphatic second round demolition of Australia&#8217;s Alexei Popyrin on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The Italian world number one needed just two hours and one minute to dispatch Popyrin 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.<\/p>\n<p>Sinner &#8212; who only dropped four games in his first round win over Vit Kopriva on Tuesday &#8212; was similarly brisk against Popyrin.<\/p>\n<p>The 24-year-old broke Popyrin five times as he moved through the gears against his opponent, ranked 36th in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Sinner faces Canadian 27th seed Denis Shapovalov in the third round on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obviously I try to play the best tennis I can, the first round match is always different compared to the further you go (in the tournament),&#8221; Sinner said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m very happy that I managed these matches as good as I could, when you are up two sets and a break you try to serve as best as you can.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Today, it felt like neither of us served well but I was returning well and especially on the second serve. I am happy about today, I am aiming to improve on the serve but the rest (of my game) I am quite comfortable with.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sinner has reached the final of all three Grand Slams this season, winning the Australian Open and Wimbledon either side of a defeat to Carlos Alcaraz at the French Open.<\/p>\n<p>He is bidding to become the first man to successfully defend the US Open since Roger Federer won the last of five consecutive titles in 2008.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tommy Paul survived a brutal five-set epic that finished at 1:46 am to fight his way past Nuno Borges and into the third round of the US Open early Friday. The 14th-seeded American finally made it count after 4hr 45mins to pull through 7-6 (8\/6), 6-3, 5-7, 5-7, 7-5 in New York. Late-night finishes in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}