Carlos Alcaraz swept Wu Yibing aside to reach the US Open fourth round – and said he is getting better with every match as he continues his return from a long-term injury lay-off.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard underlined why he remains a serious contender to defend his title in New York with a 6-3 6-4 6-1 victory over China’s Wu.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old’s opening-round match in Flushing Meadows was his first on a singles court for 139 days after injuring his wrist in April.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz came through his opener in straight sets but had to battle back from a set down against Portugal’s Jaime Faria in the second round.<\/p>\n
However, Alcaraz continued to build momentum on Friday, needing two hours and 20 minutes on court to beat Wu.<\/p>\n
“To be honest, I’m better than I thought,” the seven-time major champion said.<\/p>\n
“Physically I thought I was going to be bad after the first match, but I am recovering really well. I am doing great things off the court to be in a good state.<\/p>\n
“Right now, I think my level is really good. I think I have caught the rhythm of the competition.<\/p>\n
“Every time that I step on the court I give it all. I’m just trying to improve, be better every match and I think I’m getting there.”<\/p>\n
American 20th seed Tommy Paul – who Alcaraz has beaten six times in a row – awaits in the fourth round.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz’s path to an eighth major title has opened up over the past few days.<\/p>\n
French Open champion and Wimbledon runner-up Alexander Zverev heads the men’s draw in the absence of injured world number one Jannik Sinner.<\/p>\n
As the second seed, Alcaraz cannot meet Zverev until the final – and the German has been taken to five sets and kept on court until 2am in his two matches so far.<\/p>\n
Novak Djokovic suffered a shock first-round exit to Argentine Mariano Navone, while Canadian third seed Felix Auger-Aliassime lost to Karen Khachanov in the second round.<\/p>\n
As it stands, American eighth seed Ben Shelton is the only top-10 player that Alcaraz can meet before the semi-finals. He could then face seventh seed Daniil Medvedev in the last four.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz has won all three of his meetings with Shelton and has a 6-3 winning head-to-head against Medvedev – although the inconsistent Russian beat him at Indian Wells in March.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Zverev’s potential pre-final opponents include home hope Taylor Fritz and Italy’s French Open runner-up Flavio Cobolli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz swept Wu Yibing aside to reach the US Open fourth round – and said he is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-760256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}