After coming through his opening match with little fuss, the questions then turned to how Alcaraz would pull up physically two days later.<\/p>\n
Sweeping aside 23-year-old Faria answered those emphatically, although Alcaraz knows the tests will get tougher if he is able to move further through the draw.<\/p>\n
As well as the likelihood of facing opponents ranked much higher than Safiullin and Faria, it will be interesting to see how his body continues to react to playing more five-set matches in quick succession after such a long absence.<\/p>\n
On whether he wished he had been quicker against Faria, Alcaraz said: “At the end, I realised that playing four sets was really good for me to test everything physically, to test my body, how I feel, and how I’m going to feel tomorrow after this match.”<\/p>\n
With his fierce rival Jannik Sinner missing from New York through injury, and 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic already out, Alcaraz might increasingly fancy his chances of going all the way in a draw which looks to be wide open.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz’s next challenge will be overcoming China’s Wu Yibing, who is ranked 113th in the world, in the last 32.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, American 20th seed Tommy Paul – a potential opponent for Alcaraz in the fourth round – continued his progress with a 6-2 6-3 5-7 6-4 victory over Croatia’s Dino Prizmic.<\/p>\n
Paul goes on to face Kazakh 15th seed Alexander Bublik, who cruised past French veteran Adrian Mannarino in a 6-3 6-1 6-1 win.<\/p>\n
Eighth seed Ben Shelton continued his own quest to become the first American men’s champion since Andy Roddick in 2003 with a 6-3 5-7 7-6 (7-3) 7-5 victory over Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz.<\/p>\n
Two-time semi-finalist Frances Tiafoe, another home favourite, demonstrated his great form with a 6-3 7-6 (7-2) 7-5 win against Japan’s Rei Sakamoto, while Argentina\u2019s Mariano Navone backed up his stunning first-round knockout of Djokovic with a 3-6 6-3 6-4 7-6 (7-4) victory over 2021 Wimbledon runner-up Matteo Berrettini.<\/p>\n
Spanish 12th seed Rafael Jodar was the biggest casualty in the men’s draw on day four as he was beaten 6-2 6-1 6-1 by Chinese world number 124 Bu Yunchaokete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After coming through his opening match with little fuss, the questions then turned to how Alcaraz would pull…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-613056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}