Felix Auger-Aliassime earned a hard-fought 4-6, 7-6 (7), 7-5, 7-6 (4) win over No. 8 Alex De Minaur on Wednesday to return to the US Open semifinals four years after his first appearance.
The 25th-seeded Auger-Aliassime, a 25-year-old Canadian, was a semifinalist at Flushing Meadows in 2021, his only other time reaching that stage of a major.
With his wins over No. 3 Alexander Zverev, No. 15 Andrey Rublev and now De Minaur, it’s the first time Auger-Aliassime has beaten multiple ATP Top-20 players in the same major.
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He’s guaranteed to face another Friday in the semifinals — either world No. 1 Jannik Sinner or No. 10 Lorenzo Musetti, who play an all-Italian quarterfinal in the second night session match at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The quarterfinal between Auger-Aliassime and De Minaur went 4 hours and 10 minutes, the longest four-set match of this year’s tournament. The second set alone was 87 minutes, the longest set played on the men’s side.
Auger-Aliassime earned his 25th match win on hard court this season, fourth most on the men’s tour. He also improved to 6-0 in tiebreaks at this year’s US Open, tied for the most won by any man en route to the semifinals since tiebreaks were introduced at the 1970 tournament.
De Minaur, a 26-year-old Australian, dropped to 0-5 in major quarterfinals — the only men in the Open era with a worse record in the quarterfinals of a Slam are Rublev (0-10) and Tommy Robredo (0-7). Guy Forget was also 0-5 for his career.
Lleyton Hewitt remains the last Australian man to make the US Open semifinals, in 2005.
ESPN Research contributed to this report.
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