Top seed Jannik Sinner never gives his US Open opponent hope of an upset

Jannik Sinner never gave his US Open third-round opponent Chris O’Connell a moment to think about pulling off the kind of monumental upsets that eliminated Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz .

The No. 1-ranked Sinner, suddenly the favorite to win the men’s championship at Flushing Meadows next weekend, won his first five games and 21 of his first 29 points to make it pretty clear how things will go at Arthur Ashe Stadium and ended a 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 victory over O’Connell in less than two hours.

“I felt like it was from the beginning,” O’Connell said. “I felt a bit invisible, to be honest. … Every time I hit it, I felt like I had to do something with it, because he was just on top of me. It suffocates me.”

Taking to the court less than 15 hours after Djokovic’s loss to Alexei Popyrin and two days after Alcaraz’s loss to Botic van de Zandschulp, Sinner was equally dominant in every facet of the sport. With 23-time major champion Serena Williams watching from a suite at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Sinner hit 15 aces. He never faced a break point. He won five of O’Connell’s 12 service games. He finished with twice as many winners, 46, as unforced errors, 22.

“The best tennis player I’ve ever played, for sure,” said the 30-year-old O’Connell.

Since losing the first set, he has played in New York against Mackie McDonald – which was also the first set Sinner has played since news broke of a doping case involving two positive tests in March for traces of steroids banned anabolic – 23- A one-year player from Italy performed flawlessly, losing only 18 games in nine sets.

Read more:Defending champion Novak Djokovic loses in US Open shock

Seeking to collect his second Grand Slam title of the year after winning the first of his career at the Australian Open in January, Sinner will face No. 14 Tommy Paul of the United States in the fourth round on Monday or qualifier Gabriel Diallo from Canada.

Perhaps there was some caution on Sinner’s part heading into Saturday given recent events. This is, after all, only the third time in the Open era (the others were in 1973 and 2000) that two of the top three seeds have gone before the fourth round.

So Sinner found himself as the man most likely to win the US Open, a status that belonged to No. 3 Alcaraz — the French Open and Wimbledon champion this season — before the tournament began. No. 2 Djokovic – the defending champion and owner of a men’s record 24 majors – overcame the odds when Alcaraz was sent home on Thursday night, only to call it quits after his own early exit on Friday night.

O’Connell, ranked 87th, had hoped to pull off another upset, even though he had never defeated a member of the top 10 or made it past the third round at a Slam.

What Van de Zandschulp and Popyrin did allowed O’Connell to dream of producing something similar against Sinner.

“I mean, yeah, I have to believe it,” O’Connell said, “but I felt like he was really on fire.”

It’s pretty difficult trying to follow up a career-best win with another, and Van de Zandschulp didn’t really show up on Saturday, being knocked out by No. 25 Jack Draper 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.

“After the game (against Alcaraz), it was a bit crazy,” Van de Zandschulp said. “You try to think about the next game, but you are reminded a lot of the previous day’s game. So of course it was hard to play today after the last two days.”

Draper, a 22-year-old left-hander from Great Britain, is in the fourth round at Flushing Meadows for the second consecutive year. He never got past this stage at a Grand Slam tournament, and neither did his next opponent, unseeded Tomas Machac, a 6-3, 6-1, 6-2 winner against David Goffin.

Earlier on Saturday, Jasmine Paolini joined Coco Gauff as the only women to reach at least the fourth round at every major in 2024, reaching that far at the US Open for the first time with a 6-3, 6-4 victory in front of no. 30. seed Iulia Putintseva.

Fifth-seeded Paolini, a 28-year-old from Italy, had never advanced past the second round in 16 major appearances entering this season. But she reached the fourth round at the Australian Open in January, before being runner-up at both the French Open in June and Wimbledon in July.

Now it’s back to Week 2. Paolini has collected 13 of her 22 forehand winners against Putintseva at Louis Armstrong Stadium and will meet 2023 French Open finalist Karolina Muchova on Monday.

Also reaching the fourth round with a win on Saturday was No. 6 Jessica Pegula of the United States. She overwhelmed Jessica Bouzas Maneiro of Spain 6-3, 6-3 on Arthur Ashe Stadium. Bouzas Maneiro grabbed the attention at Wimbledon by knocking out defending champion Marketa Vondrousova in the first round.

Get the day’s best, funniest and weirdest stories from the LA sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.

This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.