New York: Defending champion Carlos Alcaraz overcame an early wobble to book his place in the third round of the US Open on Wednesday, recovering from a set down to defeat Portugal’s Jaime Faria in four sets.<\/p>\n
\t Alcaraz, who is playing in New York after returning from a four-month layoff due to a wrist injury, defeated his 72nd-ranked opponent 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 6-2 in 2hr 40 min at the Arthur Ashe Stadium.<\/p>\n
\t Alcaraz, 23, will face China’s Wu Yibing in the third round.<\/p>\n
\t Faria had got off to a dream start, serving solidly and chasing down every ball to put Alcaraz under pressure.<\/p>\n
\t Faria’s persistence got its reward in the seventh game, claiming the first break of the match to go 4-3 up when Alcaraz flubbed a forehand.<\/p>\n
\t The Portuguese held to love in the next game, sending down a booming ace to take a 5-3 lead.<\/p>\n
\t Another strong service game saw him close out the set, holding easily with a blistering serve that Alcaraz could only flail at.<\/p>\n
\t Yet after an impressive opening set, Faria’s serve fell apart in the second while Alcaraz upped the tempo and began to find a telling extra zip in his groundstrokes.<\/p>\n
\t Although Alcaraz had to save two break points in the opening game before holding, it was all one-way traffic thereafter.<\/p>\n
\t Faria was broken three times as Alcaraz went through the gears to take control of the contest.<\/p>\n
\t The Spaniard’s momentum extended into the third set, with Faria broken again to go 2-0 down.<\/p>\n
\t Faria hit back with a break of Alcaraz’s serve to make it 2-1, but was soon back in trouble after being broken in the next game to trail 3-1.<\/p>\n
\t The set went with serve thereafter as Alcaraz took a 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
\t Alcaraz went a double break up in the fourth to move into a 5-1 lead and served out to seal victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York: Defending champion Carlos Alcaraz overcame an early wobble to book his place in the third round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[271,4267,463,3829],"class_list":["post-64229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-carlos-alcaraz","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-jaime-faria","tag-us-open","tag-us-open-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}