Defending champion Carlos Alcaraz continued his impressive form at the US Open with a dominant 6-3 6-2 6-4 victory against Alexander Zverev in the quarterfinals. <\/p>\n
It means there will be three former champions in the men\u2019s semifinals at this year\u2019s US Open: Daniil Medvedev, who plays Alcaraz on Friday, and three-time winner Novak Djokovic. <\/p>\n
Unseeded American Ben Shelton completes the semifinal line-up, from which Alcaraz and Djokovic, the tournament\u2019s top two seeds, are the strong favorites to reach Sunday\u2019s final in what would be a repeat of the Wimbledon showpiece in July. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think they are at a level of their own at the moment,\u201d Zverev told reporters after facing the Spaniard. \u201cThe other guys have got to catch up. That\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s match was evenly contested until Alcaraz broke at 4-3 in the first set. The 20-year-old started to assert his superiority from there, breaking Zverev twice in the second set and at 4-4 in the third. <\/p>\n
He completed the victory in two hours and 30 minutes \u2013 racking up 29 winners and electrifying the New York crowd with several huge forehands \u2013 before celebrating with an homage to Real Madrid star Jude Bellingham, who responded to the Los Blancos<\/em> fan on social media, saying: \u201cQue maquina!<\/em> (what a machine!) Keep going mate.\u201d <\/p>\n Zverev, who was coming off a bruising five-set victory against Jannik Sinner in the previous round, said that he was struggling with discomfort in his left hamstring from the second set onwards, preventing him from generating speed on his serve. <\/p>\n \u201cI think my biggest weapon was kind of taken away after the first set,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to even compete if you don\u2019t have that.\u201d <\/p>\n A year after claiming his first grand slam title, Alcaraz will now contest his fourth major semifinal. He holds a 2-1 advantage in the head-to-head match-up against Medvedev, including comfortable wins at Indian Wells and Wimbledon earlier this year. <\/p>\n \u201cThe last matches that I played against Daniil, I played a tactical game [and] played perfectly,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cI did pretty well, all the things that I had to do against him, so I think my game suits pretty well against that type of opponent, like Daniil.\u201d <\/p>\n Alcaraz\u2019s record at the US Open now stands at 16 wins and one defeat having matched Andre Agassi\u2019s feat as the second man to reach the quarterfinals three times at the tournament before turning 21. <\/p>\n \u201cI think I\u2019m more mature now,\u201d he said when asked how he has changed over the past 12 months. \u201cI grew up a lot since last year. Last year, I was facing my first semifinal of a grand slam. Now, I\u2019m facing my fourth one. I feel like I\u2019m a totally different player.\u201d <\/p>\n\n Defending champion Carlos Alcaraz continued his impressive form at the US Open with a dominant 6-3 6-2 6-4 victory against Alexander Zverev in the quarterfinals. It means there will be three former champions in the men\u2019s semifinals at this year\u2019s US Open: Daniil Medvedev, who plays Alcaraz on Friday, and three-time winner Novak Djokovic. Unseeded <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}