Frances Tiafoe upsets No. 2 Rafael Nadal to reach quarter-finals at U.S. Open

Frances Tiafoe's vision was blurry from the tears. He was thrilled — overwhelmed, even — when the last point was over and it hit him that, yes, he had ended Rafael Nadal's 22-match Grand Slam winning streak Monday and reached the U.S. Open quarter-finals for the first time.

"I felt like the world stopped," Tiafoe said. "I couldn't hear anything for a minute."

Then Tiafoe found himself "losing it in the locker room" when he saw that NBA superstar LeBron James gave him a Twitter shoutout.

What meant the most to Tiafoe about his 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over 22-time major champion Nadal in the fourth round at Flushing Meadows, though, was looking up in his Arthur Ashe Stadium guest box and knowing his parents, Constant and Alphina, were there.

"To see them experience me beat Rafa Nadal — they've seen me have big wins, but to beat those `Mount Rushmore' guys? For them, I can't imagine what was going through their heads," said Tiafoe, a 24-year-old American seeded 22nd at the U.S. Open. "I mean, they're going to remember today for the rest of their lives."

His parents both emigrated to the United States from Sierra Leone in West Africa amid its civil war in the 1990s. They ended up in Maryland, where Constant helped construct a tennis training centre for juniors, then became a maintenance man there; Alphina, Frances said, was "a nurse, working two jobs, working overtime through the nights." Frances and his twin brother, Franklin, were born in 1998, and soon would be spending hour upon hour where Dad's job was, rackets in hand.

Maybe one day, went the dream, a college scholarship would come of it.

"It wasn't anything supposed to be like this," Tiafoe said Monday evening, hours after by far his biggest victory.

He is the youngest American man to get this far at the U.S. Open since Andy Roddick in 2006, but this was not a case of a one-sided crowd backing one of its own. Nadal is about as popular as it gets in tennis and heard plenty of support as the volume raised after the retractable roof was shut in the fourth set.

"It's something to tell the kids, the grandkids: `Yeah, I beat Rafa,"' Tiafoe said with a big smile.

'I played a bad match and he played a good match'

He served better than No. 2 seed Nadal. More surprisingly, he returned better, too. And he kept his cool, remained in the moment and never let the stakes or the opponent get to him. Nadal, a 36-year-old from Spain, had won both of their previous matches, and every set they played, too.

"Well, the difference is easy: I played a bad match and he played a good match," Nadal said. "At the end that's it."

That was before Nadal, Novak Djokovic, who has 21 Grand Slam titles, and Roger Federer, who has 20, began dominating men's tennis. Djokovic, 35, did not enter this U.S. Open because is not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was not allowed to enter the United States; Federer, 41, has undergone a series of operations on his right knee and last played at Wimbledon last year.

Now come the inevitable questions about whether their era of excellence is wrapping up.

"It signifies that the years go by," Nadal said. "It's the circle of life."

Tiafoe now meets No. 9 Andrey Rublev, who beat No. 7 Cam Norrie 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 earlier Monday.

Late Monday turned into early Tuesday when third-seeded Carlos Alcaraz beat No. 15 seed Marin Cilic 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 in a match that lasted 3 hours, 54 minutes and ended at 2:23 a.m.

No. 11 Jannik Sinner rallied from two games down in the fifth set to beat Ilya Ivashka 6-1, 5-7, 6-2, 4-6, 6-3.

Swiatek brushes off early struggles to advance

The No. 1 woman, Iga Swiatek, moved into her first quarter-final at Flushing Meadows by coming back to beat Jule Neiemeier 2-6, 6-4, 6-0.

The 21-year-old from Poland will face another first-time U.S. Open quarter-finalist: No. 8 Jessica Pegula, the highest-ranked American woman, who advanced with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over two-time Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova.

Another quarter-final will be two-time major finalist Karolina Pliskova against No. 6 Aryna Sabalenka.