When the final point ended and it dawned on Francis Tiafoe that, yes, he had halted Rafael Nadal’s 22-match Grand Slam winning streak on Monday and made it to the US Open quarterfinals for the first time, he was overjoyed and overcome with joy.
However, Tiafoe’s victory over No. 2 seed Nadal in the fourth round at Flushing Meadows was most meaningful to him since he could see his parents, Constant and Alphina, from his guest box in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
During the country’s civil strife in the 1990s, his parents fled Sierra Leone for the United States. They eventually settled in Maryland, where Constant worked on building a youth tennis training facility before taking on maintenance duties there.
Since Andy Roddick in 2006, he is the youngest American man to advance this far in the US Open; yet, this was not a case of a biased crowd supporting one of its own. When the retractable roof was closed in the fourth set, Nadal, who is about as well-liked as it gets in tennis, heard a lot of encouragement.
Prior to the match on Monday, Nadal had won 27 straight matches after losing to James Blake in 2005. He was 31-2 in major tournaments against Americans.
He outperformed Nadal in serving. Even more unexpectedly, he also came back better. And he never let the stakes or his opponent get to him; instead, he maintained his composure and lived in the present. The 36-year-old Spaniard Nadal had triumphed in both of their previous meetings, as well as every set they had played.
A day prior, Frances Tiafoe watched on television as his friend Nick Kyrgios defeated the No. 1 seed and defending champion Daniil Medvedev.
