New York (AFP) – Frances Tiafoe left Arthur Ashe Stadium court to a standing ovation on Friday, but he won’t be coming back on Sunday. The 28-year-old Washington native fell in four sets to compatriot Ben Shelton in a blockbuster US Open semi-final, coming up empty in his third trip to the last four in the last five years.
“You never want to be too confident you can get back to it, but I feel pretty confident I can get back to it, for sure,” “Big Foe” said. “I’m just happy with how I’ve been doing and how I’ve been showing up every week. I had a little blip, just having a little wrist thing. Outside of that, I’ve been showing up every week, which is something I really wanted to do and something I was happy about doing.”
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Despite the disappointment, Tiafoe leaves Flushing Meadows in a much better state of mind than he was in after a third-round loss last year. “I was doing my interview here last year, and it was really, really bad how I felt where I was at,” he said. “It’s hard, man. I’m upset, but I’m at the same time so proud of myself of where I’ve been.”
Tiafoe won the ATP grass court title in Halle this year and reached the final of the Cincinnati Masters in the run-up to the Open. But he said he just didn’t have the firepower he needed against Shelton. “Even though I’ve won a lot of matches, still something that’s lacking for me is my serve percentage-wise. I was working way too hard on my serve, and he was serving 82%. It’ kind of hard. Especially lefties, moving around, spins, kicks, sliders, big ones. Obviously he can get it up there when he’s really juicing out.”
“For me, I’m grinding, grinding, grinding in service games, and he was trying to break. I think that was the biggest thing. It’s something to work on as he plots a way to give himself more chances on the game’s biggest stages. Ultimately I want to do the thing, man. I want to be a Grand Slam champion one day … just get back to the drawing board and keep working.”
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