Tiafoe Escapes Michelsen in Five Sets, Reaches Third US Open Semifinal

NEW YORK — Alex Michelsen had not dropped a set in six days of tennis. Serving for the third set at 6-5, up two sets to none, against a man whose record from that position in major tournaments was two wins and seventeen losses, the Arthur Ashe crowd grew restless in the way crowds do when the math looks obvious. Then Frances Tiafoe broke him.

What followed took another two hours and twenty minutes and produced the most significant comeback of Tiafoe’s career: a 5-7, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 7-6(6) quarterfinal victory over his 21-year-old American compatriot that ended on a forehand winner in the match tiebreak, four hours and 38 minutes after the first ball was struck. The only man in the draw who had not lost a set across six matches would lose three in a row Tuesday evening.

Tiafoe is now in his third US Open semifinal, joining Andre Agassi as the only American men to reach the last four in New York three times since 2000. He will face either Carlos Alcaraz or Ben Shelton, who were scheduled to play their own quarterfinal later Tuesday night on the same court. But by the time Tiafoe finished his on-court interview, the conversation was less about what comes next than about what happened at 6-5 in the third set, and whether Tiafoe had finally found a way through the wall that had beaten him seventeen times before.

The history was specific and stubborn. Going into Tuesday, he was 2-17 at majors when trailing two sets to zero, with zero wins at the US Open in that situation across his entire career. Michelsen, playing the cleanest tennis of his young professional life, gave him no openings in the first two sets: a first 7-5, then 6-3, with breaks that came from Tiafoe trying to force matters that were not there yet. The 21-year-old from California had not been tested all fortnight. Nobody had made him play a fourth game in any match. Tuesday was the first time.

Michelsen had two points at 40-30 in that service game at 6-5, held his racket, drove a backhand into the net on the first, miscued on the second. Tiafoe broke, held, then broke early in the fourth, then held through a fourth set that ran 6-3 with a clarity the first two had refused. “He played really well. He wasn’t nervous for the moment,” Tiafoe said. “He really made me come up with some good stuff. Just an incredible match and happy I stayed with it and didn’t make any excuses.”

The fifth set began the wrong way. Tiafoe was broken in the second game, fell 0-3, and the numbers that had followed him — 2-17, zero, the seventeen losses from the same position — were present again. He recovered the break at 3-3, was pushed to 4-4 before holding, and then, at 5-4 in the match tiebreak with Michelsen ahead, served two consecutive aces. Both were first serves, both out wide, both unreturnable. It was the kind of moment that either happens or it does not, and it happened. Tiafoe converted the next point with a forehand winner and the match was done.

The last time a man came back from two sets down in a US Open men’s quarterfinal, the man doing it was Roger Federer against Gaël Monfils, in 2014. That match lasted 3 hours and 33 minutes. Tiafoe’s ran sixty-five minutes longer. CBS Sports reported the comeback as the biggest of his grand slam career, a qualifier with enough matches behind it to carry some weight.

Michelsen’s record entering Tuesday was 16-0 in sets for the tournament. He leaves with three losses in a single evening. His serve functioned throughout — 14 aces, 71 percent of first-serve points won — and his backhand was a weapon until the point at 40-30 that wasn’t. The margin between a completed straight-sets win and the match he played is located in that one service game. It is not a large margin. It produced a very different result.

“Everyone was sleeping the first couple hours,” Tiafoe said to the crowd after. “I was asleep with y’all. Then the energy was incredible. Thank you, guys.”

The semifinal opponent will not be known until Alcaraz and Shelton finish their own quarterfinal. Alcaraz is the second seed and beat Tiafoe in the 2022 US Open semifinals, the match that introduced both players to the Arthur Ashe moment. Shelton, seeded eighth, plays an aggressive game that suits the hard court but requires clean decision-making in the tight points. NBC Sports noted that a Tiafoe-Shelton semifinal would place two Americans in the US Open last four, a circumstance not seen at the tournament in some years.

What Tuesday cannot settle is whether the fifth-set tiebreak represents something Tiafoe has found or something that found him on a particular night in New York. He was 2-17 in the situation entering the match. He is now 3-17. The numbers are real, but so is the forehand that ended it.