Photograph: Darron Cummings/AP
When he reached the quarter-finals of Wimbledon this year, many tipped the 22-year-old Lucas Pouille as a star of the future. After his victory over Rafael Nadal in the fourth round of the US Open on Sunday evening, he looked a lot like a star for the present.
Pouille outlasted the two-time champion over five gruelling sets 6-1, 2-6, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 to reach the quarter-finals, where he will play his countryman Gaël Monfils who had earlier beaten Marcos Baghdatis.
The match lasted four hours and seven minutes, and was decided by a fifth set tie-break – an appropriate end to a match in which the players ended up with 156 points each. At 6-6 in the breaker, Nadal had a brilliant opportunity to bring up a match point but dumped his forehand into the net with the court wide open. Pouille pulled off a winner down the line the next point to seal victory. “I was very aggressive all the match and at 6-6 [in the tiebreak] I didn’t want to miss,” he said after the match.
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