In order to become world number one at the conclusion of the US Open, fifth-seed Ruud must battle his way to the showpiece event and better Carlos Alcaraz's performance at Flushing Meadows, and he prepares to meet Khachanov boasting the third-best record of deciding sets won in the past year with 76.5%, only behind Diego Schwartzman and Filip Krajinovic.įirst round: vs. Making Scandinavian history by reaching the final of the French Open earlier this year - only to lose to Rafael Nadal - Ruud has been no stranger to a tie-break in the US Open so far, but he admitted that he may have dropped a gear or two against Berrettini as unforced errors started to creep in late on.
However, a calm and collected Ruud watched his counterpart become the architect of his own downfall in their quarter-final, with Berrettini racking up the unforced error count early doors - his backhand was particularly off colour - and that abysmal start ended up proving costly.īerrettini began to claw his way back into the contest after ceding the first five games to Ruud, who did not post a single ace on the day compared to the Italian's 13, but a 6-1 6-4 7-6 victory would get the job done for the 23-year-old, who impressed with a 75% first-serve win percentage. Showing true grit and determination in the face of adversity during all of his encounters so far, Khachanov demonstrated a far greater proficiency from second serves to Kyrgios - winning 64% compared to 47% for the Australian - but Ruud has already seen off one of the game's big servers.Īttempting to break the Berrettini serve is usually a recipe for failure, with the Italian going into his clash with Ruud boasting the seventh-best win percentage of all ATP players on his first serve for the past year (77.5%). Indeed, Khachanov has dropped at least one set in all of his five matches at Flushing Meadows so far this year, including against Jack Draper - who retired injured - but a top-10 place in the rankings could be his if he manages to get his hands on the trophy. His opponent's racquet-smashing outburst after the match unsurprisingly made all the headlines, but Khachanov now has a first-ever Grand Slam semi-final to look forward to, and it has been a far from straightforward path for the Russian to get there. Thirty of those aces belonged to Khachanov, who was battling both the Wimbledon runner-up and the majority of the crowd on the Australian's side, but the 26-year-old focused on his game to prevail 7-5 4-6 7-5 6-7 6-4 - sealing it with a brilliant serve down the T that Kyrgios could not make strong contact on.
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