U.S. Open Live Updates: Grigor Dimitrov Upsets Roger Federer

Grigor Dimitrov upsets Roger Federer.

Roger Federer suffered a stunning loss Tuesday night, falling in five sets to 78th-ranked Grigor Dimitrov in the United States Open quarterfinals, 3-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 6-2.

Dimitrov is the lowest-ranked player to beat Federer at the U.S. Open, surpassing 55th-ranked John Millman, whom Federer lost to in the fourth round last year.

But Dimitrov, 28, who won the Cincinnati Masters and World Tour Finals two years ago to reach a career-best ranking of No. 3, has long been thought of as one of the most talented players of his generation, albeit without fulfilling his potential.

Tuesday’s scores: Men | Women

Dimitrov had never beaten Federer in seven previous meetings, a stat that became particularly fraught because of a moniker he earned early in his career: “Baby Federer,” in reference to many of his strokes looking similar to Federer’s.

His ranking this year started inside the top 20, but has slid quickly, adding to his frustration. At the French Open this year, Dimitrov snapped at a spectator who cheered out for “Baby Federer.”

“Do I look like a baby to you?” Dimitrov replied.

The low point of Dimitrov’s year came at the ATP tournament in Atlanta in July, where he lost in the first round to 405th-ranked Kevin King.

Federer, 38, who received an off-court medical timeout before the fifth set began, won the most recent of his five U.S. Open titles in 2008. He had struggled in his first two rounds at this year’s Open, dropping the first set in each match, but had seemed to find his form in the third and fourth rounds, winning both convincingly.

Federer won the first set comfortably, breaking Dimitrov’s opening service game and then holding on to take the set, 6-3. Dimitrov broke in the sixth game of the second set to go up 4-2. He served for the second set at 5-3, but dropped his serve to Federer. Federer then dropped his serve in turn, leveling the match.

Federer seemed to get back on track in the third set. After Dimitrov double-faulted on break point at 3-2, Federer won the next three games.

But he was broken in the first game of the fourth set, and a spattering of errors turned into a deluge. He made 19 unforced errors, 11 on the forehand side. His success on first-serve points plummeted from 93 percent to 61 percent. He had five break points when Dimitrov served for the set at 4-5, and could not convert any of them.

After his medical timeout, Federer quickly fell behind by 3-0 in the deciding set, being broken in his first two service games. Dimitrov lost only one point on his own serve in the set. Federer finished with 61 unforced errors, 33 on the forehand side.

Federer said he had an upper back problem that started this afternoon, but he did not want to dwell on it. “This is Grigor’s moment and not my body’s moment,” he said.

In the semifinals on Friday, Dimitrov will face another first time U.S. Open semifinalist: fifth-seeded Daniil Medvedev, who won, 6-7 (6), 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, over the 2016 champion Stan Wawrinka on Tuesday afternoon.

Federer’s exit follows those of the two No. 1 seeds in singles, Novak Djovokic, who lost on Sunday, and Naomi Osaka, who lost Monday.

Serena Williams turned in her most dominant performance in years, beating the 18th-seeded Wang Qiang, 6-1, 6-0, in just 44 minutes on Tuesday to claim her 100th singles win at the U.S. Open.

Wang had beaten the second-seeded Ashleigh Barty in the fourth round, but had no answers for Williams. Williams hit 25 winners; Wang hit zero.

It was Williams’s most lopsided victory since 2015, when she beat Madison Brengle, 6-0, 6-1, in Madrid. But this was not her most-lopsided win at the Open: She beat Carla Suárez Navarro, 6-0, 6-0, in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open six years ago.

Williams is in the U.S. Open semifinals for the 13th time; she has not lost before the semifinals in New York since 2007. On Thursday she will face fifth-seeded Elina Svitolina.

Daniil Medvedev reaches his first Grand Slam semifinal.

The fifth-seeded Medvedev has taken on the role of the villain at this year’s Open: egging on the New York crowd to boo him and then congratulating it for giving him the energy he needed to win.

Now he has another role: semifinalist.

Medvedev, a 23-year-old Russian, defeated Stan Wawrinka, 7-6 (6), 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, on Tuesday.

Medvedev has been the most successful man on tour this summer. Since July 31, he has played 21 singles matches, reaching consecutive finals in Washington, Montreal and Cincinnati. But all those matches are a sign not only of his success, but also of a possible problem.

After nearly all of his matches in New York, he has complained of a lack of energy or a variety of physical ailments. He was treated for a quadriceps injury early in Tuesday’s match and said after he won that he had not been sure he could finish.

But each time, his overwhelming talent has come through. Tuesday’s win brought his number of wins this year to 49, which leads the ATP Tour.

Medvedev is the youngest U.S. Open semifinalist in nine years, a sign of the Grand Slam dominance of the veteran Big Three: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic — all in their 30s.

Medvedev will get two days to recover before Friday’s semifinals, where he will play the winner of Tuesday night’s match between Federer and Grigor Dimitrov.

Stat to watch: short rallies vs. long rallies.

Tennis statistics divide points into three rally lengths: zero to four shots, five to eight shots and nine or more shots. Analysis of rally statistics from the last four U.S. Opens shows that it is more important to be good in short rallies than in long ones. For example, Stan Wawrinka, who lost in the quarterfinals to Daniil Medvedev, has been a master of the short rally in New York this year. But he actually had a losing record when the length of the rally extended longer.

When Wawrinka hit the ball a maximum of just two times in a rally (0-4 shot rally length), he was wildly successful against his first four opponents, winning 79 more points than he lost. But when the rally was extended to five shots or longer, he lost 12 more points than he won.

A hidden dynamic of tennis is that the longer the point develops, the more even the outcome naturally becomes, no matter how good a player is perceived to be at grinding away from the back of the court.

In the men’s tournament at the Open for the past four years, 88 percent of the time the match winner also won more points in the 0-4 shot rally length. In that same span, match winners won the nine-plus shot rallies just 53 percent of the time on average.

The numbers are almost identical in the women’s singles draw, where 86 percent of the match winners led in short rallies, and only 51 percent in the long ones. — CRAIG O’SHANNESSY

Elina Svitolina claims a spot in the semifinals.

Fifth-seeded Elina Svitolina reached her second consecutive Grand Slam semifinal, beating 16th-seeded Johanna Konta, 6-4, 6-4, on Tuesday afternoon.

Both sets followed similar patterns. In each, Svitolina held a long service game to level at 3-3, broke Konta quickly for a 4-3 lead, then held twice to win. In the second set, Svitolina had two match points on return at 5-3, but Konta saved each with strong serves to force the Ukrainian to serve out the match.

“It was quite even, and then in the end I had to close on my serve, which was very tricky,” Svitolina, 24, said. “I’m just very, very happy the way I handled the pressure today.”

Tuesday’s match was Konta’s sixth career Grand Slam quarterfinal, but she still awaits her first Grand Slam final. Konta has never beaten Svitolina in four tries; she hit 35 unforced errors, compared with 13 by Svitolina.

Svitolina will play eighth-seeded Serena Williams on Thursday night. Svitolina has lost to Williams three times, but won their most recent match, in the third round of the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Svitolina’s boyfriend, Gaël Monfils, watched intently from the front row of her player’s box as she continued what has been the most successful joint run at a Grand Slam event for the couple. Monfils plays a quarterfinal against Matteo Berrettini on Wednesday afternoon.

“Definitely we are pushing each other, I think,” Svitolina said of Monfils. “We were trying to join each other in the quarterfinals; now, it’s the semifinals for him. Now he needs to step up his game.”

Max Gendler and Naila-Jean Meyers contributed reporting.