Top-seeded Colombians Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah will play eighth seeds Marcel Granollers of Spain and Argentina’s Horacio Zeballos on Friday in the US Open doubles final.

Cabal and Farah advanced to their third Grand Slam championship title match by ending the run of British No. 15 seeds Jamie Murray and Neal Skupski 7-6(5), 7-6(8) in two hours on Friday at Flushing Meadows. The pair saved two set points at 5/6 and 7/8 in the second set tie-break.

Two months ago, the Colombians captured their first major crown at Wimbledon, rising to joint No. 1 in the ATP Doubles Rankings. The Nitto ATP Finals qualifiers are now 44-13 on the 2019 season.

“We’re super happy to be here in the final of the US Open,” said Farah. “We had a great match today, a great battle against Jamie and Neal. We’re very grateful to be in one more final of a Slam.”

Cabal and Farah failed to convert match points at 5-4 in the second set, then at 7/6 in the second tie-break, prior to Murray and Skupski making a forehand error on their third match point. Murray partnered Brazil’s Bruno Soares to the 2016 US Open doubles title.

Earlier in the day, Granollers and Zeballos extended their winning streak to 10 matches to reach their first Grand Slam doubles championship final.

The Spanish/Argentine tandem earned a hard-fought 7-6(2), 7-6(5) victory over the all-German team of Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies, this year’s Roland Garros titlists, in one hour and 40 minutes. The duo won 84 per cent of their first service points and struck 39 winners.

“We’re in the final in a Grand Slam. That’s one of the things you always dream,” said Zeballos. “I don’t want to wake up.”

Eighth seed Granollers and Zeballos saved the lone break point of the first set with a forehand volley winner at 3-3, 30/40, prior to the pair breaking clear at 2/2 in the tie-break with five straight points. The 45-minute opener, featuring 34 winners, ended with consecutive groundstroke errors from No. 12 seeds Krawietz and Mies.

There were no opportunities to break en route to a tense second tie-break. Granollers and Zeballos won the first two points, but Krawietz and Mies responded to lead 5/3 only for errors to cost the German team. Granollers and Zeballos booked their place in the final with a forehand volley winner.

“It was a crazy match. It was so tight. The difference was only two or three points, so I’m really happy,” said Zeballos. “It was a really tense match. I’m going to enjoy this win today.”

Last month, Granollers and Zeballos captured their first crown on their team debut at the Coupe Rogers, an ATP Masters 1000 event in Montreal. Granollers will now look to go one better than in 2014, when he finished runner-up at the US Open with Marc Lopez.

Prior to arriving at the US Open, Krawietz and Mies had lost eight of their 10 matches since becoming the first all-German team to clinch the Roland Garros crown (d. Chardy/Martin) in May. The team, who is bidding to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals, to be held at The O2 in London from 10-17 November, is now 21-14 on the season – including the New York Open trophy.

Matteo Berrettini and his team have not hidden their belief that the Italian’s work on his mental game has helped him enjoy the best season of his career, cracking the Top 20 of the ATP Rankings for the first time and now reaching his first major semi-final at the US Open. But behind that is a massive game with weaponry that can trouble anybody.

It all starts with one shot for the 23-year-old.

“For sure, my forehand is my best weapon,” Berrettini said.

The No. 24 seed has finished nine per cent of his points (111/1282) this tournament with a forehand winner, ranking 12th among the 128 players who competed in the main draw. No player placed ahead of him in that department is still alive at the US Open, and more than 44 per cent of his winners and 77 per cent of his baseline winners at the season’s final Grand Slam (111/250) have come off the forehand wing.

Berrettini began working with coach Vincenzo Santopadre about nine years ago, and he says that he has tinkered with Berrettini’s forehand technique less than any other stroke, and it’s not particularly close.

“I think sometimes he can play [his forehand] like this,” Santopadre said, putting his left hand over his eyes as if to say Berrettini can crush forehands with his eyes closed.

“It’s so natural,” Santopadre said. “But if you see a video of him playing when he was 15 or 16 on the forehand you can say, ‘Okay, this is Berrettini’ if you don’t see the face. But the serve and the backhand you say, ‘No, it was somebody else.’”

Berrettini’s toughest match of the tournament thus far was his five-set epic against Gael Monfils in the quarter-finals on Wednesday. Berrettini let slip his first of four match points he lost with a double fault. And in crunch time, he missed a few key backhands into the net. But at 5/4 in the fifth-set tie-break the Italian’s greatest strength rose to the occasion. Berrettini relentlessly attacked ball after ball with his forehand, which even the speedy Frenchman couldn’t handle, eventually allowing him to sprint into net to put away a forehand volley.

Another tough one for the Italian came against #NextGenATP Aussie Alexei Popyrin — a player with a similar game — in the third round, which went to a fourth-set tie-break.

“His forehand is good. When he’s got his position, he can hit it to both sides of the court and you can’t really read it. Usually, I can sort of read where the person is hitting, but with him I had difficulty reading it at the start of the match. And his serve is also a weapon,” Popyrin said. “When he comes in, he comes in well. He’s got a big presence at the net, so it’s not that easy to pass him. You see him coming in and you want to pass him from the first shot, so that’s why you do those mistakes that I did… his forehand is a weapon. His forehand is one of the best forehands I’ve played.

“That forehand was heavy. Even the forehands he hit in the middle of the court, they were forehands I could attack off, but I couldn’t. Usually, I could attack those forehands that came into the middle of the court, but with his I couldn’t. They were just really, really heavy forehands. It had so much spin on it and so much pace on it.”

What Santopadre believes makes it a special shot is that it’s multi-faceted. Berrettini doesn’t rely on one type of forehand — an inside-in blast, for example — to finish or dominate points. He can pose a threat from everywhere on the court.

“It’s good because he can put so much power and [make it] so much heavy and so much spin to the ball that it’s really a tough ball to hit for the player who has to hit the ball. It’s complex [for them],” Santopadre said. “He has a very good forehand from every part of the court. There isn’t just one forehand. There’s a forehand on the right side, on the left side, from back, from behind. I think it’s really an unbelievable stroke because he could play from wherever and how he likes and he can hit winners everywhere.”

As strong as his forehand is, Berrettini has anything but a one-dimensional game. Berrettini and his head coach note that his serve is his next biggest weapon. The three-time ATP Tour titlist — who has won two trophies in 2019 — has hit 66 aces, good for seventh at this year’s US Open.

Berrettini has won 78 per cent of his first-serve points, better than anyone who has played more than three matches at this event except for Rafael Nadal (79%), his semi-final opponent.

“I think I did also a great job with my backhand today. With the slice I was mixing well. I’m really proud of my tennis today,” Berrettini said after his victory against Monfils.

A power game and a devastating backhand slice don’t always go together. But when Berrettini was 17, he hurt his left wrist. So, for three months, all he was able to do was slice.

“Vincenzo, my coach, he used to play just slice, no spin at all, no topspin at all. I guess he knows how to teach slice,” Berrettini said, cracking a smile, after his fourth-round win against Andrey Rublev. “I’ve been working [on it] a lot. I’m practising a lot with Flavio Cipolla, a good friend of mine [who is] playing with unbelievable slice. I called him and said, ‘I was playing the slice like you today’, because I was feeling really well. Yeah, that’s the secret.”

More From Flushing Meadows
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Monfils: ‘I Gave My Heart’ In New York Defeat

Craig O’Shannessy, who has been a part of World No. 1 Novak Djokovic’s coaching team, began working on analytics with Berrettini and the Italian’s team this year. And he also believes that is an important part of Berrettini’s game.

“The forehand is the big weapon,” O’Shannessy said. “I really like his backhand slice. It neutralises the opponent’s backhand really well. When I see him hit it, I rarely see opponents do something with it. I don’t see them hitting winners off his backhand slice. I don’t see them coming to the net off it. But ultimately, it’s a neutralising play and the forehand is what he does the most damage with.”

Overall, Berrettini, whose upper body isn’t all that different in build from Stan Wawrinka, is never going to back away from his own game plan. At Wimbledon, he played Roger Federer in the fourth round.

“I think I have the weapons to play my match and see what’s going to happen,” Berrettini said at the time.

Although he lost in straight sets, that mindset and those tools have helped Berrettini to enjoy the biggest tournament run of his career at Flushing Meadows.

“I’m going to use my weapons, for sure,” Berrettini said. “Normally I don’t adjust my tennis for others. I just think about myself, my serve, my forehand, then I start to think about others.”

Such is the nature of tennis that different generations regularly clash and Friday’s second semi-final at the US Open is no different, when Rafael Nadal meets Matteo Berrettini for the first time under the lights on Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Nadal, who won his first ATP Tour match as a 15-year-old in his hometown of Mallorca in 2002, has been a long-term inspiration to Berrettini, who, at 23 years of age, contests his first Grand Slam championship semi-final at Flushing Meadows.

After his epic quarter-final win over Gael Monfils on Thursday, Berrettini recalled watching Nadal beat Guillermo Coria in the 2005 Internazionali BNL d’Italia final, as an eight-year-old, because one of the sport’s greatest clay-court matches happened to be on a television channel that normally screened cartoons.

“I remember the final in Rome against Coria,” remembered Berrettini. “It was on a channel that was about cartoons. I was young. ‘These guys, I mean, six hours. Come on! I want to catch my cartoons’. I remember that it was unbelievable.

“I think also, I was going to school and a lot of my classmates, they actually started to follow tennis more, to watch tennis more because the match was free. They were, ‘Oh, you’re playing this sport then?’ I was, like, ‘Yeah. I’m dreaming about playing these matches.’ And now I’m here. So I’m happy.”

The 2005 Rome final came a few weeks before Nadal’s life changed forever with his first major championship crown at Roland Garros. Fast forward 14 years and the Spaniard has won 18 Grand Slam championship trophies, and Friday’s match against Berrettini will be Nadal’s 33rd major semi-final (26-6 record).

Looking ahead to meeting the Italian, Nadal said, “Berrettini is having a great year. He’s in the semi-finals, winning a lot of good matches… I need to play my best, and I think today [against Diego Schwartzman] I took a step forward.”

With a crushing forehand (111 winners) and big serve (66 aces in five matches), Berrettini can match Nadal’s firepower on Friday, so may be able to dictate, but recovering from his draining four-hour win over Monfils – the biggest Grand Slam win of his career – could be a determining factor.

Berrettini has spent 15 hours and 23 minutes on court in five victories at the US Open, while Nadal has played four matches totalling nine hours and 43 minutes. He got a walkover against Thanasi Kokkinakis in the second round.

Berrettini, who lost to Denis Kudla in the 2018 US Open first round, has enjoyed a stellar season, which includes two ATP Tour crowns at the Hungarian Open in Budapest (d. Krajinovic) and at the Mercedes Cup in Stuttgart (d. Auger-Aliassime). He also finished runner-up at the BMW Open by FWU in Munich (l. to Garin) and has a 34-15 match record this season.

As a result of his US Open performance, Berrettini has jumped from 14th to ninth position in the 2019 ATP Race To London for a spot at the Nitto ATP Finals, to be held at The O2 in London from 10-17 November.

More About Berrettini
Quarter-final Match Report: Berrettini Beats Monfils In Fifth Set Epic
Feature: What Has Inspired Matteo To His 2019 Surge?

Over the past 10 days, Nadal, who in July became the first player to clinch a spot at this year’s elite season finale, remains on course to add to his 2010, 2013, 2017 US Open titles haul and further improve his chances of finishing year-end No. 1 for a fifth time.

The 33-year-old Spaniard has a 45-6 match record in 2019, which includes a record-extending 12th title at Roland Garros (d. Thiem), plus two ATP Masters 1000 crowns in Rome (his ninth) and the Coupe Rogers In Montreal. He also finished runner-up at the Australian Open (l. to Djokovic) at the start of the year.

Big-match experience may be the deciding factor on Friday night, but Berrettini will be sure to do his best against Nadal, a player he considers “the greatest fighter ever in this sport. It’s unbelievable [what] he’s doing. I admire him, the way he’s on the court. His attitude is something that, I think, it’s close to the perfection.”

More About Nadal
Feature: Rapid Rafa – Serve, Play & Win Faster
Quarter-final Match Report: Nadal Battles Past Schwartzman
Quarter-final Reaction: How Does Nadal Describe His Fighting Spirit?

A CLOSER LOOK AT BERRETTINI vs. NADAL (Stats Through US Open QFs)

Statistics courtesy: Leo Levin/SMT

Rafael Nadal’s fighting spirit is one of his trademark qualities. It’s played a crucial role in pulling himself up from the brink of defeat on numerous occasions throughout his career, as well as bouncing back from several serious injuries.

But for the Spaniard, it’s not the biggest key to his success.

“I think my success is not only because of the spirit of the fight,” Nadal said after his US Open quarter-final win on Wednesday over Argentine Diego Schwartzman. “There is lots of things after this.”

Nadal believes that fighting spirit is common on the ATP Tour and his less overt characteristics have played a bigger role in his achievements. The second seed treats every player across the net as though they’re the toughest opponent he’ll face and remains unflappably positive in the bleakest of moments.

A humble attitude doesn’t necessarily make for a headline-grabbing image, but it does lead to 18 Grand Slam crowns and 83 tour-level singles titles.

“I think I had stable character during all my life, all my career. That helps to be…mentally focussed, mentally relaxed and mentally always ready to respect every opponent, to play every point, to play every game, to play every set and every match until the end,” Nadal said. “But of course the stories say that I have been a good fighter on court with good character, positive character, and I am not the only one. There is a lot of ones that fight a lot.”

Nadal will need all of his positive attributes for his semi-final against Italian Matteo Berrettini, the No. 24 seed. The Spaniard is two matches away from a fourth crown in New York and his 19th Grand Slam title, which would put him one shy of all-time leader Roger Federer (20). But as usual, he is only looking ahead to Friday’s showdown.

“I need to be ready to play my best tennis,” Nadal said. “Today I made a step forward, in my opinion. That match gave me confidence. Two matches in a row against two tough opponents. [This is] a moment to increase the level a little bit more and I really believe that I can do it.”

Scorelines can be deceiving, and that certainly held true in the last quarter-final of the 2019 US Open. Three-time champion Rafael Nadal defeated Argentine Diego Schwartzman 6-4, 7-5, 6-2 in the early hours of Thursday morning, but the Spaniard’s victory was anything but straightforward.

Nadal overcame a spirited effort from the No. 20 seed to win his eighth consecutive quarter-final in Flushing Meadows in what felt like a titanic battle, not a straight-sets win. The legendary lefty earned double-break leads in each of the first two sets, but was unable to hang onto those on either occasion.

“He’s one of the best players of the world. When he’s playing well, he’s able to win against everybody,” Nadal said. “Tonight was for me [a] tough match. I’m very happy for the victory.”

However, when it mattered most, Nadal maintained the more consistent level, advancing to his eighth semi-final in New York after two hours and 47 minutes. The Spaniard has long been dominant in major quarter-finals, improving to 33-7 at this stage of Slams with five of those losses coming at the Australian Open. This is Nadal’s 11th tournament in 2019, and he has reached at least the last four in 10 of them.

“Diego is playing unbelievable. I need to play my best in the next round to have the chance to be in the semi-finals,” Nadal said after his fourth-round victory. That prediction proved to be spot on.

Nadal crushed 35 winners and broke serve eight times to find a way to win against an opponent who refused to back down. Many times, Nadal’s unrelenting groundstrokes typically push players further behind the baseline as a match wears on. But Schwartzman tried to go blow-for-blow with the second seed, playing aggressively whenever possible.

His effort was not enough, though, as Nadal earned a semi-final showdown against Matteo Berrettini, who had never made a Slam quarter-final before this tournament. The Italian outlasted Frenchman Gael Monfils in an epic five-setter earlier in the day. It will be the pair’s first FedEx ATP Head2Head meeting. 

“I really believe that if you want to win tournaments, you need to go through tough opponents like I had against Marin, today against Diego. He was playing great the whole event and now [Matteo is] another player that is playing great,” Nadal said. “Let’s see. I need to play my best, and I think today I made a step forward.”

Nadal sprinted to a 4-0 lead in the opener. But once Schwartzman found his rhythm in the baseline rallies, he was able to engage with the World No. 2. And seemingly out of nowhere, Schwartzman got both breaks back to get to 4-4, earning two break points to give himself a chance to serve for the set. But Nadal hung in there to avoid losing a third consecutive service game, and Schwartzman hit a backhand into the net on set point.

Again, Nadal appeared poised to pull away when he bashed a forehand before putting away an overhead off the bounce to break for 3-1 in the second set. Quickly, the 18-time Slam titlist earned another break to move to 5-1. But Schwartzman never went away, making an amazing series of gets at 15-0, finally shoveling a forehand winner down the line before raising both arms to get the crowd involved.

In the moment, it seemed like Schwartzman was simply enjoying his time in the world’s biggest tennis stadium. But it showed that he was giving Nadal all he can handle, again recovering both breaks to return to 5-5 as chants of ‘Olé’ rang out through the New York night. However, Nadal again was too strong in crunch time, hammering a forehand down the line to earn two set points, and converting the second of those when Schwartzman missed a forehand into the net.

Nadal received a visit from the trainer at 2-1 in the third set, getting his forearm rubbed for what he later said was a cramp. But the Spaniard won the final four games of the match, punctuating his triumph with a big roar.

“I’m feeling good. Today was [a] very humid day, very heavy day. I had some cramps in the end of the second and first five games, six games of the third. And then I took some salt, that’s all, and then [it] was over,” Nadal said. “The body is in good shape, I think. No big problems. Just of course now [I’m] a little bit tired, long day, 1:30 am, need to go to sleep. But I really believe that I’m going to be in good shape.”

Schwartzman, who also reached the last eight here two years ago (l. to Carreno Busta), was trying to reach his first major semi-final. When the next ATP Rankings are released, he will become the No. 1 player from Argentina.

“[Rafa is like] a lion in the middle of the jungle. He’s a fighter. He knows how to play the important moments every single time,” said Schwartzman, who trails Nadal 0-8 in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series. “I played eight times, and every important moment he played better than me.”

Did You Know?
– Nadal is the only player remaining in the field who has reached a Grand Slam final. The only other player left who has made a major semi-final is Grigor Dimitrov, who defeated Roger Federer on Tuesday evening.

– This is the first time since 2008 that Nadal has made the semi-finals or better at all four majors.

Who says players give canned answers during interviews? Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Stefanos Tsitsipas put a hilarious twist on their Q&A’s during a segment that aired Tuesday on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’.

The trio joined WTA players for Fallon’s challenge to insert an unconventional statement into one of their responses. Can Murray work in talking about ‘kitten naps’ as part of his pre-tournament preparation? How about Djokovic incorporating ‘When the score is deuce, the juice gets loose’ into his reflections on this year’s Wimbledon final? Will Tsitsipas figure out how ‘Slap your dad, call him Brad’ can be used to explain his training regime?

Play the video below to find out!

#USOpen stars such as Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) and @MariaSharapova sneak random phrases into their interviews in Drop It In! #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/HFjybWsvcx

— Fallon Tonight (@FallonTonight) September 4, 2019

Djokovic and Tsitsipas will compete next week at Laver Cup, while Murray returns later this month in Zhuhai.