{"id":187973,"date":"2025-09-28T16:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T16:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/187973\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T16:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T16:50:07","slug":"carlos-alcaraz-sweeps-brandon-nakashima-into-japan-open-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/187973\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz sweeps Brandon Nakashima, into Japan Open semis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sep 28, 2025, 07:36 AM ET<\/p>\n

Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> eased into the semifinals of the Japan Open on Sunday with a comfortable win over Brandon Nakashima<\/a>, equaling a personal best with his 65th match win of the season.<\/p>\n

Having brushed off concerns<\/a> over an ankle injury suffered Thursday, Alcaraz looked in complete control in a 6-2, 6-4 win that put him into the semifinals of a ninth consecutive tour-level event.<\/p>\n

Nakashima could not handle Alcaraz’s serve as he hit 25 winners past the American. Alcaraz might have wrapped up the win earlier but failed to capitalize on three match points.<\/p>\n

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“I always say that closing a match is difficult,” Alcaraz said. “Even tougher when you had match points, like I did when I was returning. Losing that game, I thought it was going to be really difficult, but I just tried to maintain my focus and play some great points in the last game. I don’t think I’ve played a last game like this, so I’m really happy about it.”<\/p>\n

The ATP Tour said the victory matched Alcaraz’s 65 wins in 2023.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz will next take on Casper Ruud<\/a>, who needed less than an hour to beat Aleksandar Vukic<\/a> 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n

Second seed Taylor Fritz<\/a> battled his way past Sebastian Korda<\/a> 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-3 to set up a semifinal against fellow American Jenson Brooksby<\/a>, who saw off third seed Holger Rune<\/a> 6-3, 6-3.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press and PA contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sep 28, 2025, 07:36 AM ET Carlos Alcaraz eased into the semifinals of the Japan Open on Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-187973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}