{"id":41422,"date":"2021-09-03T08:10:07","date_gmt":"2021-09-03T12:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=41422"},"modified":"2021-09-03T08:10:07","modified_gmt":"2021-09-03T12:10:07","slug":"us-open-day-4-recap-novak-djokovic-quest-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/09\/03\/us-open-day-4-recap-novak-djokovic-quest-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"US Open Men&#8217;s Day 4 Recap: Novak Djokovic&#8217;s Quest Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Day 4 at the US Open saw the end of the second round of the men&#8217;s draw, with Novak Djokovic coming one step closer to the Calendar Year Grand Slam and booking a third round matchup with Kei Nishikori. It also saw the demise of another top 10 seed, with Miami champion and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/07\/08\/the-rise-of-hubert-hurkacz\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Wimbledon semifinalist Hubert Hurkacz<\/a> losing to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/09\/02\/andreas-seppi-stuns-hubert-hurkacz\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">37-year-old Andreas Seppi<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>US Open Day 4 Men&#8217;s Recap<\/h2>\n<h4>On the plus side<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Kei Nishikori <\/strong>added to his legendary fifth-set record with another one of his trademark Slam marathon wins, this time against Mackenzie McDonald. Just like when they met in Washington, it was a match full of long rallies and breaks of serve, with both players mirroring each other for large parts and struggling to break each other&#8217;s defenses. Nishikori might not be the same player he once was but he&#8217;s once again shown signs that he might return to the top 20 or even top 10 at some point soon if his body allows it. Of course his draws haven&#8217;t been helping and Djokovic is hardly the player Nishikori would want to see in the third round.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alexander Zverev<\/strong> is yet to face a break point this tournament; he dispatched Albert Ramos with consummate ease in only 75 minutes, dropping only four games. It was a ruthless display from the German, who has to be feeling confident about his chances of winning his first Slam here in New York.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reilly Opelka <\/strong>reached the third round at the US Open for the first time in his career with a straightforward three-set win over Lorenzo Musetti. The recent Canadian Open finalist has been constantly on the rise and he&#8217;s been looking sharp so far here. He&#8217;s yet to be broken and has only played two tiebreaks in six sets. He&#8217;ll certainly be feeling confident ahead of his third round clash with Nikoloz Basilashvili.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"6NCFBLVRRBtf9kZMDPq5xg\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1337483899\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'6NCFBLVRRBtf9kZMDPq5xg',sig:'UxFoZG8WyQOMlOx6qu9c6orV91o8bf0WEs4icQ_Q-po=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1337483899',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>Who looked bad<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Hubert Hurkazc <\/strong>won the first set but was stunned by Andreas Seppi in four, in what was without question one of the biggest upsets of the tournament. The career of the 37-year-old Italian looked to be almost done, but here he is making the third round of a Grand Slam with a great chance to advance further (faces Oscar Otte in the next round). While Seppi&#8217;s hard work and grit have to be praised, this is an extremely disappointing result for Hurkacz, who remains extremely inconsistent and will still have to wait a bit to make his top 10 debut.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/03\/03\/alexander-bublik-underrated-maverick\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Alexander Bublik<\/a><\/strong> was seeded for this tournament, but he took no advantage of it and continued his trend of poor Slam performances. He did hit 40 aces, but also 11 double faults; Bublik&#8217;s very risky and instinctive game tends to struggle in best of 5 and today was no exception. Jack Sock, on the other hand, returns to the third round of a Slam for the first time since&#8230;the 2017 Australian Open. He&#8217;s been showing signs of revival for a while and definitely deserved this victory.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Taylor Fritz <\/strong>had got a monkey off his back with his first win in five matches against De Minaur in the first round, but he couldn&#8217;t build on that and disappointingly lost to Jensen Brooksby, in a match marred by the latter&#8217;s long bathroom breaks after sets 2 and 3. Fritz had several chances to get a different result but couldn&#8217;t get it done and was eventually frustrated by his younger compatriot&#8217;s game.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo from Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 4 at the US Open saw the end of the second round of the men&#8217;s draw, with Novak Djokovic coming one step closer to the Calendar Year Grand Slam and booking a third round matchup with Kei Nishikori. It also saw the demise of another top 10 seed, with Miami champion and Wimbledon semifinalist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1742,"featured_media":41406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[16670,915,510,85,597,16732,118,8212,146,10332,2400,19,347,43],"class_list":["post-41422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-us-open","tag-2021-us-open","tag-albert-ramos","tag-alexander-bublik","tag-alexander-zverev","tag-andreas-seppi","tag-hubert-hurkazc","tag-jack-sock","tag-jenson-brooksby","tag-kei-nishikori","tag-lorenzo-musetti","tag-mackenzie-mcdonald","tag-reilly-opelka","tag-taylor-fritz","tag-us-open"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}