By HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer
NEW YORK — After double-faulting to fall behind two sets to none – a deficit he has never overcome – in the second round of the U.S. Open on Thursday night, Carlos Alcaraz slung his equipment bag over a shoulder and trudged toward the locker room.
Glancing in the direction of his coach, 2003 French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz pointed his right index finger at his temple, then wagged that finger, as if to say, “I’m not thinking straight.”
He might have been excused for being confused by what was transpiring under the closed retractable roof at Arthur Ashe Stadium on a chilly evening, and one set later, Alcaraz’s 15-match Grand Slam unbeaten streak was over with a sloppy 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 loss to 74th-ranked Botic van de Zandschulp.
“It was a fight against myself, in my mind, during the match. In tennis, you are playing against someone that wants the same as you – to win the match – and you have to be as … calm as you can, just to think better in the match and try to do good things,” Alcaraz said. “Today I was playing against the opponent, and I was playing against myself, in my mind. A lot of emotions that I couldn’t control.”
The result eliminated the pre-tournament men’s favorite and certainly was hard to predict beforehand, given the third-seeded Alcaraz’s standing in the game, his excellence of late and his opponent’s far-lesser resume.
It followed another exit in Ashe for a past U.S. Open champion, Naomi Osaka, who was sent home Thursday by Karolina Muchova, 6-3, 7-6 (5). That one, though, was not nearly as out-of-nowhere as what happened to Alcaraz.
He won the French Open in June and Wimbledon in July to raise his career total to four major championships, including taking the title at Flushing Meadows in 2022. Then, in early August, Alcaraz won a silver medal at the Paris Olympics, losing to Novak Djokovic in the final.
Maybe, Alcaraz acknowledged, a tennis schedule he called “so tight” drained him too much.
“Probably, I came here with not as much energy as I thought that I was going to (have),” he said. “But, I mean, I don’t want to put that as excuse.”
What’s clear is he never found his footing against van de Zandschulp, a 28-year-old from the Netherlands. Alcaraz was way off, repeatedly missing the sorts of shots he usually makes routinely.
The 21-year-old from Spain came in with a 16-2 record at the U.S. Open, where he never lost before the quarterfinals in three previous appearances. This also was Alcaraz’s earliest defeat at any major tournament since bowing out in the second round of Wimbledon in 2021 as a teenager; he’s never been beaten in the first round at a Slam event.
In contrast, van de Zandschulp only once has been to a Grand Slam quarterfinal, getting that far at the U.S. Open in 2021.
Otherwise, though, he is not someone most folks would have expected to pull off this sort of monumental upset. Consider: van de Zandschulp was just 11-18 for the season at the start of this week and hadn’t won consecutive matches at a tour-level event in 2024 until now.
“Actually, I am a little bit at a loss for words,” he said. “It’s been an incredible evening for me.”
It sure was.
The key stat probably was that van de Zandschulp won the point on 28 of his 35 trips to the net.
The opening set was unbelievably lopsided. With van de Zandschulp’s powerful forehands and serves at up to 132 mph finding their marks, Alcaraz never seemed to get comfortable.
He did not produce a single winner in that set and was nearly doubled up in total points, 24-13. The second set was a bit better for him, but not enough so, and a double-fault gift-wrapped a service break that put van de Zandschulp up 6-5. When Alcaraz pushed a forehand wide to end the next game, van de Zandschulp finished off a hold at love that gave him the initial two sets after 1½ hours of action.
It didn’t take long for Alcaraz to fall behind by a break in the third, too, at 3-2, but he made a stand immediately – well, with some help, because van de Zandschulp’s double-fault ceded a break that made it 3-all. Alcaraz then held at love and smiled as he strutted to the changeover.
That grin quickly was gone, though, because Alcaraz’s mistakes kept arriving, and van de Zandschulp never folded.
“Of course I had some nerves, but I think if you want to beat one of these guys, you have to keep your calm and keep your head there,” said van de Zandschulp, who will face No. 25 seed Jack Draper of Britain in the third round on Saturday. “Otherwise, they take advantage of it.”
Seemingly back in her match, suddenly a point from getting to a third set, Osaka lost her way Thursday night, missing forehand after forehand until she ceded that game and chucked her racket, sending it clattering on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court.
Not much later, she was out of the tournament, eliminated, 6-3, 7-6 (5), by Muchova in the second round of an event where Osaka won two of her four Grand Slam titles.
“It’s a little rough, because I do take these losses really personally. It’s like a dramatic word, but I feel like my heart dies every time I lose,” said Osaka, the champion at Flushing Meadows in 2018 and 2020, and at the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021. “It sucks a lot, but I’ve been trying to be more mature and learn and talk more about them.”
Osaka – once ranked No. 1 but now No. 88 after missing nearly 1½ years because of mental health breaks and time off to have a baby – struggled for much of the early going, dropping five consecutive games and 22 of 26 points in one stretch.
But she played much better in the second set, getting her only break of the match to lead 5-4 and yelling “Come on!” when Muchova netted a forehand. The crowd roared for Osaka.
Serving for that set, Osaka hit a 119 mph ace, her fastest of the match, to lead 40-love. That gave her three chances to extend the match to a third set. That’s when Osaka really faltered, making five forehand errors, with a double-fault mixed in, to waste all three of those set points and, worse, get broken.
“During the pressure moments, I got nervous, and I don’t know if I just have to keep playing more matches and get used to that feeling, especially on a really big stage,” Osaka said. “Honestly, if I get past the disappointment, I feel pretty proud of myself to have gotten that many opportunities while still feeling like I could have played much better.”
When they got to the tiebreaker, it was Muchova who asserted herself, then used some scrambling defense on the last point, flinging the ball back over the net and seeing Osaka send a swinging volley out.
“This is unbelievable – the atmosphere and the people. This is crazy energy,” said Muchova, a 28-year-old from the Czech Republic.
She enjoyed a breakout season in 2023, reaching the final at the French Open before losing to Iga Swiatek, and the semifinals at the U.S. Open before exiting against eventual champion Coco Gauff. But shortly after that run at Flushing Meadows, Muchova left the tour because of an injured right wrist and she had surgery in October.
She was sidelined until this June; her Grand Slam return was a first-round loss at Wimbledon last month.
“Honestly, this year, the biggest win for me is that I could play again,” Muchova said. “This is just a cherry on top, to be here again, in this stadium.”
On this brisk evening, with the temperature dipping to 70 degrees after topping 90 on Wednesday afternoon, Muchova did not look at all like someone who is currently ranked 52nd.
Using a pen to jot down thoughts in a notebook during changeovers, Osaka was never able to seize control of the on-court exchanges.
Her groundstrokes were not as perfect as they were during a 6-3, 6-2 victory over 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko on Tuesday. Osaka did not make a single unforced error until the second set of that one, which became her first win against an opponent ranked in the top 10 in more than four years.
But if Osaka played so-so this time, Muchova was the one who looked terrific, whether serve-and-volleying or mixing in slices, finding her spots with serves or turning up the power when she wanted.
From the moment Osaka went ahead 3-2 at the start, everything went in Muchova’s direction through the end of that set. And just as it seemed Osaka was getting back into the contest – with thousands of spectators supporting her – her forehand let her down.
Iga Swiatek and Jannik Sinner flashed their No. 1 form with powerful performances that moved them into the third round.
Swiatek raced by Japanese qualifier Ena Shibahara, 6-0, 6-1, finishing off the match in 65 minutes. It took the 2022 U.S. Open champion longer than that to play the second set of her first-round match, when she needed a tiebreaker that she eventually closed out in 72 minutes.
“I just felt the rhythm was much better,” Swiatek said. “I was a bit tense in my last match, so today I just wanted to focus on the right things.”
Earlier, Sinner downed Alex Michelsen, 6-4, 6-0, 6-2, in 1 hour, 39 minutes.
Sinner dropped the first set in his opening match in New York but didn’t encounter much trouble while facing his second straight American on Ashe. The Italian earned his 50th victory of the season, including his ATP Tour-leading 30th on hard courts.
His previous one was a little shaky after a slow start against Mackie McDonald, so Sinner got in a practice session after that match and was happy with the results Thursday.
“Trying to keep going, trying to understand what works here best on these courts. Let’s see what I can do in the next round,” he said.
That will be against Australian Christopher O’Connell on Saturday.
Fifth-seeded Daniil Medvedev, the 2021 U.S. Open champion, moved into the third round along with No. 10 Alex de Minaur, who will next face Dan Evans. Evans’ victory in a tidy 2 hours, 37 minutes was three hours quicker than it took him to beat Karen Khachanov in the first round, their match setting a U.S. Open record by lasting 5 hours, 35 minutes.
Sinner beat Michelsen for the second time this month, having also won a second-round match in Cincinnati shortly before it was revealed that he tested positive twice for an anabolic steroid in March.
Another Italian, Jasmine Paolini, played just three points before advancing when Karolina Pliskova appeared to injure her left foot. The fifth-seeded Paolini, who has reached the finals of the French Open and Wimbledon in her breakout season, advanced past the second round of the U.S. Open for the first time.
“Finally, we made third round!” she said with a laugh during an interview on the court.
Paolini will next play No. 30 seed Yulia Putintseva.
Other women’s winners included No. 6 Jessica Pegula, No. 15 Anna Kalinskaya, No. 16 Liudmilla Samsonova and No. 18 Diana Shnaider. Pegula took out fellow American Sofia Kenin.
But fourth-seeded Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, withdrew from the tournament before her second-round match with a lower back injury, sending French qualifier Jessika Ponchet to the weekend.
“Unfortunately, I have to withdraw from my match today due to my injuries,” Rybakina said in a statement. “I did not want to finish the last Grand Slam of the year this way but I have to listen to my body, and I hope I can close out the remainder of the year strong.”
No. 7 seed Hurbert Hurkacz was eliminated in straight sets by Jordan Thompson, and No. 16 Sebastian Korda was knocked out by Tomas Machac.
AP sports writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this story.
