On Saturday at the U.S. Open, Jannik Sinner made sure his third-round opponent, Chris O’Connell, never had a chance to think about pulling off a big upset like those against Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz.
Sinner commented, “It shows that this sport is unpredictable. If you drop even a little in your level—whether mentally, tennis-wise, or physically—it can greatly impact the result. The opponents who lost played incredible tennis. And that happens.”
But Sinner, ranked No. 1, is now seen as the top contender for the men’s title at Flushing Meadows. He won the first five games and 21 of the first 29 points, clearly showing how the match would go. Sinner finished with a 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 win over O’Connell in less than two hours.
O’Connell said, “I felt like he was on from the start. I felt a bit lost, to be honest. Every shot, I felt like I had to do something with it because he was just on top of me. He was suffocating me.”
Playing less than 15 hours after Djokovic lost to Alexei Popyrin, and two days after Alcaraz’s loss to Botic van de Zandschulp, Sinner dominated in every aspect.
With Serena Williams watching from a suite, Sinner hit 15 aces, never faced a break point, won five of O’Connell’s 12 service games, and had more than twice as many winners, 46, as unforced errors, 22.
O’Connell said, “The best tennis player I’ve ever played against, for sure.” The only past U.S. Open men’s champion still in the tournament is 2021 winner Daniil Medvedev.
Medvedev, after beating No. 31 Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 6-4, 6-3, said, “I definitely didn’t expect this in the fourth round with Novak and Carlos out. It’s fun, but it’s a new tournament now. I need to play my best to try to win it again.”
Next, Medvedev will face Nuno Borges, who came back to win after being a point away from elimination at 6-3 in a fourth-set tiebreaker, eventually beating Jakub Mensik 6-7 (5), 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (6), 6-0.
Top-ranked Iga Swiatek, who won the U.S. Open in 2022 and has five Grand Slam titles, defeated No. 25 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-4, 6-2 to make it to the fourth round of the U.S. Open for the fourth year in a row.
On Saturday, Jasmine Paolini joined Coco Gauff as the only woman to reach at least the fourth round in every major tournament in 2024. Paolini reached the fourth round at the U.S. Open for the first time with a 6-3, 6-4 win over No. 30 seed Yulia Putintseva.
Paolini, who was the runner-up at the French Open in June and Wimbledon in July, will next play against 2023 French Open finalist Karolina Muchova. Also moving on are No. 6 Jessica Pegula, No. 16 Liudmila Samsonova, No. 18 Diana Shnaider, and 2018 Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki.
Since losing the first set he played in New York against Mackie McDonald, which was also the first set Sinner had played since news of a doping case involving two positive tests for trace amounts of a banned steroid, the 23-year-old Italian has been flawless. He has lost only 18 games in nine sets.
Sinner, aiming for his second Grand Slam title of the year after winning his first at the Australian Open in January, will face No. 14 Tommy Paul of the United States in the fourth round on Monday. Paul won against Canadian qualifier Gabriel Diallo 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-1, 7-6 (3).
Sinner commented, “He’s a great mover. He has improved a lot recently. It’s going to be a tough challenge. He plays some great tennis, especially here in America.”
Sinner might have been cautious heading into Saturday’s match, especially given that it is only the third time in the Open era (the others being 1973 and 2000) that two of the top three seeded men have been eliminated before the fourth round.
So Sinner woke up as the top pick to win the U.S. Open, a position that had been held by No. 3 Alcaraz, who won the French Open and Wimbledon this year, before the tournament started.
No. 2 Djokovic, the defending champion with a record 24 major titles, became the favorite when Alcaraz was eliminated on Thursday. However, Djokovic lost his chance when he was also knocked out on Friday.
Ranked 87th, O’Connell hoped for another surprise win, even though he had never beaten a top 10 player or gone beyond the third round at a Grand Slam.
O’Connell saw what van de Zandschulp and Popyrin achieved and believed he might do something similar against Sinner.
“I mean, yeah, I’ve got to believe,” O’Connell said, “but I just felt that he was really on fire.”
It’s tough to follow up a career-best win with another, and van de Zandschulp didn’t perform well on Saturday, losing to No. 25 Jack Draper 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.
Draper, a 22-year-old left-hander from Britain, has never been past the fourth round in a major, and neither has his next opponent, Tomas Machac, who won 6-3, 6-1, 6-2 against David Goffin.
“After the match (against Alcaraz), it was a little bit crazy,” van de Zandschulp said. “You try to think about the next match but you get reminded a lot of the match the day before. So of course it was tough to play today after the last two days.”
