Well worth the wait: Taylor Fritz outlasts Andy Murray in D.C. Open marathon

Tennis followers needed to wait some 15 hours for prime males’s seed Taylor Fritz and three-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray to lastly take the courtroom after rain canceled all of Thursday night time’s motion on the D.C. Open.

For those who got here again Friday afternoon, the match was well worth the wait.

Murray and Fritz placed on a spectacular, three-hour efficiency in entrance of a full mid-day crowd, with Fritz outlasting a spirited Murray 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-4.

“In comparison to where my game was last year when I played Taylor, I was in a pretty bad place when I played him in Canada. I really wasn’t feeling good with my game. So my game is in a better place,” Murray stated. “I’ve made some improvements.”

Shotmaking was plentiful in spades between the 2 throughout the sun-drenched courtroom. Fritz had three set factors within the first, however Murray commanded his forehand intentionally and exactly within the closing video games and the tiebreak. After 1:27, two forehand errors by Fritz allowed Murray to serve out the final two factors and take the set. The set was disrupted after the fourth sport by local weather change protesters within the higher deck, which precipitated a delay of about seven minutes.

“It was extremely humid at the beginning of the match, and then it seemed to change a little bit,” Murray stated. “It became hotter once the clouds sort of went away and the sun came out. It felt like it became warmer but maybe not quite as humid.”

Fritz settled himself within the second, taking the primary three video games en path to forcing a 3rd set in solely 38 minutes. Three of Fritz’s 5 service video games within the set solely required the minimal 4 factors to win.

“There wasn’t so many opportunities in the second, but he took his break point when he got it, and I lost a short point you’re going to win probably nine times out of ten,” Murray stated.

The punching and counterpunching continued within the third, with neither man yielding. Fritz bought the primary and solely break within the set on the most opportune time and was in a position to serve out the match within the subsequent sport to assert his quarterfinal spot.

“He’s one of the better hard court players in the world. Certainly had my chances to win today … but obviously you want to be getting through those matches,” Murray stated.

Women’s No. 1 seed Jessica Pegula needed to come again and play first within the afternoon after finishing the ultimate match earlier than rain halted play Thursday. As Murray expressed, Friday noticed extra conventional Washington humidity than in earlier days, and Pegula dropped the primary set to Elina Svitolina however fought by to assert her ticket to the semifinals, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.

“It’s tough when the balls get heavy in this humidity and you’re serving, you don’t get a lot of free points on your serve and it’s hard to win those free points,” Pegula stated. “You’ve really got to use your legs a lot more, get a little bit more height over the net, because everything starts landing shorter and it gets harder to make the ball. It also made the rallies a lot longer because we couldn’t quite hit through the court as much.”

Svitolina saved two match factors serving down 3-5 within the deciding set, however Pegula served out the subsequent sport to advance.

“She was still playing good. She started serving really well there,” Pegula stated. “I felt like I wasn’t getting a lot of, until the game before, I think the 5-3 game, where I had chances. So I was like, ‘Okay, I need to keep holding.’”

The win is Pegula’s Eleventh all-time in Washington, tied for second amongst ladies’s gamers within the occasion’s historical past, and secures her shifting up one spot to No. 3 within the subsequent WTA world rankings.

“Being here, it’s pretty cool to come back here and always feel like I can play good tennis and have good results. So yeah, it’s fun to play here, so I’m glad I’m still around,” Pegula stated.

She’ll subsequent play No. 4 seed Maria Sakkari, who had a marathon day. The Greek performed her suspended second-round match at midday — her first of the event as a result of having a bye — and beat Canadian Leylah Fernandez in straight units earlier than returning to courtroom solely a handful of hours later for her quarterfinal towards American Madison Keys. 

The fast turnaround was no downside for Sakkari, who wanted only one:14 to dispatch the seventh-seed Keys, 6-3, 6-3. For Sakkari, it’s her sixth-career look in a hard-court semifinal, equaling her greatest consequence on the floor.

Also on the ladies’s aspect, Liudmila Samsonova of Russia continued her march to a repeat title in Washington, beating Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 6-2. She’s the one remaining former D.C. champion, man or girl, within the area.

No. 5 seed Grigor Dimitrov bought the good thing about being the primary man into the D.C. semifinal spherical and an extra day of relaxation after his opponent, 13-seed Ugo Umbert of France, withdrew earlier than their quarterfinal match as a result of a left leg harm.