Van de Zandschulp’s reward for reaching the second US Open quarter-final of his career is a meeting with German top seed Alexander Zverev.<\/p>\n
Zverev, 29, had a rare finish before midnight in New York when he beat Italian 21st seed Luciano Darderi 6-2 6-2 7-6 (7-3) to reach the last eight.<\/p>\n
Zverev’s previous three matches finished at 1:55am, 2:15am and 1:09am.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what to do with myself because it’s before midnight – I might go back to the practice courts or go to a bar,” Zverev joked.<\/p>\n
On whether he wants to play Van de Zandschulp in Wednesday’s night session, the French Open champion added: “I will request the night match for sure. <\/p>\n
“I’ve rented this court out from 11pm until 2am for two weeks so I hope they will continue putting me on at [night] time.”<\/p>\n
Earlier on Monday, Belgium’s Alexander Blockx said he was “really close” to retiring injured against Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo before playing on to reach his first major quarter-final.<\/p>\n
Blockx, seeded 28th, fought through rib pain to win 6-3 4-6 7-5 7-5, becoming the first Belgian man to make the last eight in New York.<\/p>\n
“It was really tough from the beginning of the match. I was struggling a lot, especially while serving. It kept getting worse throughout the match,” said 21-year-old Blockx.<\/p>\n
“I was really close to retiring, to be honest. I was just hanging in there, but if I would have lost the third set, I think the chances were really high of me retiring.<\/p>\n
“I’m glad that I kept on playing.”<\/p>\n
Presuming he is fit enough, Blockx will play Russian world number 50 Karen Khachanov in the quarter-finals on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Khachanov, 30, fought back to win 7-5 4-6 6-7 (6-8) 6-1 6-4 against 14th seed Learner Tien, ending the American’s attempt to put four home men in the quarter-finals for the first time since 1995.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Van de Zandschulp’s reward for reaching the second US Open quarter-final of his career is a meeting with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-840453","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\/840453","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=840453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}