NEW YORK \u2014 Jannik Sinner was so dominant Monday night at the\u00a0US Open\u00a0that his opponent had to remind him after the match that he’s not that bad of a player.<\/p>\n
Sinner sure made Alexander Bublik look like one, though.<\/p>\n
Sinner overwhelmed the only player\u00a0other than Carlos Alcaraz\u00a0who has defeated him this season, routing Bublik 6-1, 6-1, 6-1 to return to the quarterfinals of the tournament he won last year.<\/p>\n
The top-seeded Sinner’s victory took just 1 hour, 21 minutes, the second-shortest completed match in the tournament. A first-round victory for Tomas Machac was a minute shorter.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt times I felt like today I was playing some great tennis, and I managed to break him very early, which then gave me the confidence to serve a little bit better and play from the back of the court a bit better,\u201d Sinner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a faster, or a fast match.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sinner lost to Bublik in June in Halle, Germany, in a warm-up tournament before Wimbledon, but that was played on a grass court. Trying to beat the defending US Open champion on a hard court is an entirely different story \u2014 and almost impossible these days.<\/p>\n
Sinner has won 25 straight Grand Slam matches on that surface, including the last two Australian Open titles, along with his first US Open trophy last year.<\/p>\n
He will face fellow Italian Lorenzo Musetti, the No. 10 seed, on Wednesday. The other quarterfinal that day will pit No. 8 Alex de Minaur against No. 25 Felix Auger-Aliassime.<\/p>\n
Bublik, the No. 23 seed from Kazakhstan, had been one of the hottest players in tennis, with an ATP Tour-leading 11 straight victories and three titles, which is tied for the second-best this year behind Alcaraz’s six.<\/p>\n
He had won all 55 service games coming into this match, yet Sinner broke him eight times.<\/p>\n
Bublik could only smile at times, including after the match, when he told Sinner at the net that \u201cI’m not bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he wasn’t nearly good enough against Sinner, who had an 86-46 advantage in points won. Bublik helped by committing 13 double-faults.<\/p>\n
Sinner noted that Bublik had a late finish Saturday night in his five-set victory over No. 14 seed Tommy Paul, and tried to test his energy level Monday in his first night match of this tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to move him around, trying to see how he moves, trying to put it more on the physical side,\u201d Sinner said. \u201cToday I played some good tennis at times. At times, he gave me some free points.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sinner improved to 35-4 this year. Alcaraz beat him in the French Open final and also in Rome and Cincinnati \u2014 where Sinner was ill and had to stop playing in the first set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Jannik Sinner was so dominant Monday night at the\u00a0US Open\u00a0that his opponent had to remind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-114032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}