US Open Day 7 - Gauff, Jovic rescue bad day for USA

Catherine Whitaker (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, coming to you from Flushing Meadows on what has so far been a chaotic day here at the US Open. It's 6 PM, or just past 6 PM, as we come to you here in part one. If the show will be back to cover the night session matches in parts two and three, but in the day session alone, we've had an absolute glut of stories already today, a raft of shocks and frankly, a pretty disastrous set of results for the host nation, Coco Gauff aside, that is, this is not, David, the opening to Labor Day weekend that the USTA and ESPN had in mind.

David Law (0:48)

No, and I did not see this coming at all, as I've said throughout, I was expecting all American finals on both men's and women's draws. That's still not impossible. But certainly in the case of Taylor Fritz, I expected he would be one of those that would be going all the way. And it's difficult to know exactly what's happened today, but it doesn't feel entirely coincidental that they're all following one another out of the tournament. There feels to be a stress level out there at the moment.

And just a heart breaking day for them all. I mean, three big names and seeing them in the press conferences was a tough scene.

Catherine Whitaker (1:29)

Yeah, absolutely. On the men's side, Taylor Fritz, the biggest of the lot, lost to Argentine Francisco Cirundolo from two sets to love and a breakup did Taylor Fritz. 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. In his own words, I don't know how I let that happen. He was devastated in press after this defeat. Taylor Fritz, as you'd expect, this is going to be a very tough one for him to get over. Matt, how do you think he let that happen?

Matt Roberts (2:08)

Well, it was interesting actually listening to Jim Courier in commentary who was very much stressing that even though he was two sets up, he never really felt like Fritz was playing his best tennis today. And in those first two sets, Cirundolo had a lot of looks at the Fritz serve. He was getting into his service games and not taking his chances. And he builds that lead for it. He goes up a break and you're thinking, okay, even if he's not at his best, it's a really good win to get through a match like that when you haven't got your best tennis. And it was looking like it was going to be another straight sets win, not too many miles in the legs. It was all set up for him.

But, you know, I kind of tuned into the match at that point, to be honest. And I never saw Taylor Fritz looking convincing in the way that we thought he had been. And he had been in the first couple of rounds here.

He said that he felt like he was hitting his groundstrokes pretty well on the big moments in the first couple of sets. But then he felt like he lost that. And that was certainly what was happening in those latter stages. His forehand can get quite spinny, Taylor Fritz, when he's not feeling it. And he looked quite stressed on the court. I think he knew that his game wasn't really there today. And Cirundolo upped his level. And there was a lot of exchanges where Cirundolo was like hanging behind the baseline, which is exactly where he wants to be. Give him time on the ball, give him the ability to unleash on his groundstrokes. And he becomes quite a dangerous player. And yeah, like it felt like a slow, slowly just getting away from Taylor Fritz, like he just couldn't override it. And Cirundolo got a setback. And he got another setback and we were into a fifth. And even then, I thought Fritz might pull it together and win it. And he had loved 40 on Cirundolo's serve deep in that fifth set. And credit to Cirundolo in that game. He came up with some big serves and some big hitting. But as soon as Cirundolo held that game, you knew that Fritz's next service game was gonna be tough. And so it proved he threw in some errors and the match was suddenly gone away from him. Oh, it was, it was brutal, you know. He's had a very tough loss at the US Open here before in the first round to Brandon Holt four years ago. Someone he's just way better than.

I think this might be an even tougher one to stomach considering, you know, the opportunity, capital T, capital O, that we've been talking about. And now he's four years on in his career as well. And it seemed set up for him, and I think he thought it was set up for him to go really deep in this tournament, and he's let it go.