Coco Gauff on Sunday joined Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz on the US Open scrap heap as the defending champion crashed out to Emma Navarro in a blizzard of mistakes before China’s Zheng Qinwen won a record-setting 2:15am finish.
As Gauff exited, US chances were then rekindled when Frances Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz reached the men’s quarter-finals, igniting hopes of a first homegrown male Grand Slam champion since Andy Roddick’s win in New York in 2003.
Third-ranked Gauff slumped to a 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 fourth-round defeat to her fellow American on the back of 19 double faults and 60 unforced errors. The 20-year-old’s exit means Serena Williams remains the last woman to successfully defend the US Open title, in 2014.
Photo: Mike Frey-USA Today
“I lost in the first round the last two years and now to be making the quarter-finals is pretty insane,” said Navarro, who is to face Spain’s Paula Badosa for a place in the semi-finals.
Gauff’s loss was another body blow to the season’s final Grand Slam.
Djokovic, the defending men’s champion, was knocked out in the third round to suffer his earliest exit in 18 years. Fellow crowd-pleaser Alcaraz, the 2022 winner in New York, and reigning French Open and Wimbledon champion, was stunned in the second round.
“I gave it my all,” Gauff said.
“Obviously, there were things execution-wise, where I was like, I wish I could serve better. I think if I did that, it would have been a different story,” she said.
Navarro had defeated Gauff at Wimbledon in July and was dominant again on Sunday from the outset.
The 23-year-old broke for 4-2 in the first set and sealed the opener in the ninth game where one rally stretched to 27 shots.
Gauff recovered from a break down in the second set to level the match, but it was a brief respite as she served up three more double faults to slip a crucial break down again in the decider.
Zheng reached the quarter-finals for a second time with victory over Donna Vekic in a record late finish for a women’s singles match.
Seventh seed Zheng won 7-6 (7/2), 4-6, 6-2 against her 24th-ranked Croatian opponent who she also defeated in the Paris Olympics final four weeks ago.
The early morning finish was two minutes later than the old record of 2:13am from 2021, when Maria Sakkari beat Bianca Andreescu in a round-of-16 tie.
“I like to play in the night session. Here in New York it’s my first time,” Zheng said in front of a few hundred spectators in the 24,000-capacity Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The powerful 21-year-old is only the second Chinese woman to appear in two quarter-finals in New York after Li Na in 2009 and 2013.
Zheng next faces world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka who defeated her in the quarter-finals last year as well as in the final of the Australian Open in January.
Sabalenka eased into a fourth successive quarter-final with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Belgium’s Elise Mertens.
Tiafoe joined former champions Andre Agassi, Roddick and Pete Sampras as the only American men to reach at least three US Open quarter-finals since 2000.
The 20th-ranked Tiafoe notched a 6-4, 7-6 (7/3), 2-6, 6-3 victory over Alexei Popyrin, who shocked Djokovic in the previous round.
Tiafoe saved three set points in the second set and next faces Bulgarian veteran Grigor Dimitrov for a place in the semi-finals.
The 26-year-old became the second American to reach the quarter-finals after Fritz defeated Casper Ruud 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 earlier.
“I used to hit the ball off a wall dreaming about playing on Arthur Ashe Stadium where the Williams sisters won and where [Roger] Federer won like a million times,” Tiafoe said. “I want to be part of that.”
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