WHAT HAPPENED: Pablo Carreno Busta weathered the high-octane game of Denis Shapovalov and came away with a hard-fought 3-6, 7-6, 7-6, 0-6, 6-3 victory to reach the US Open semifinals for the second time on Tuesday night in New York. The Spaniard was under pressure from Shapovalov’s aggressive attack all night as the pair traded blows and probed each other’s serves to great effect, but he was able to edge the 21-year-old in two important tiebreakers in sets two and three to put him under the gun.
Shapovalov, who finished with 76 winners and 77 unforced errors on the evening, responded with a beautiful fourth set, pouring in 16 winners against just three unforced errors but he could not continue the momentum in the fifth as Carreno Busta broke for 4-2 when the Canadian committed his 11th double fault of the match.
A few games later, a 92 mph forehand gave Carreno Busta his first match point at 5-3, 40-0. It was all he would need, as the 29-year-old held at love, closing the match out in four hours and nine minutes.
“I’m destroyed, but I’m very, very happy,” Carreno Busta said on court after the match. “It’s incredible to be back in the semifinals again.”
WHAT IT MEANS: Carreno Busta reaches his second US Open semifinal and will move on to face Alexander Zverev for a spot in the final. The Spaniard also maintains his superiority over Shapovalov on hard courts. Not only did he defeat the Canadian at the US Open when they first met in the round of 16 in 2017, he has now beaten him all four times they have met on the surface.
“It's a tough moment,” Shapovalov said. “I was in that match, I had a good chance to win it. I was almost in every set. Very frustrating right now. Tough to look at positives.”
Carreno Busta, who is the oldest player remaining in the men’s singles field, lost his only previous meeting to Zverev in 2019 at Miami.
Shapovalov’s defeat leaves Australia’s Alex de Minaur (also 21) as the youngest player left in the men’s singles draw. This year’s US Open will feature a winner that was born in the 1990s for the first time, ending a streak of 63 consecutive Grand Slam titles won by players born in the 1980s.
MATCH POINT: Carreno Busta has now won multiple five-setters at the same Grand Slam event for the first time. He rallied from two sets to one down to defeat Japan’s Yasutaka Uchiyama in the opening round.
