{"id":66593,"date":"2026-09-05T22:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T22:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/66593\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T22:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T22:06:12","slug":"cobolli-and-fritz-stunned-in-us-open-round-of-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/66593\/","title":{"rendered":"Cobolli and Fritz stunned in US Open round of 32"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Flavio Cobolli and Taylor Fritz were both dumped out of the US Open in the third round on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Fifth seed Cobolli lost 6-7 (4-7) 6-3 6-0 6-3 against 21-year-old Alexander Blockx in two hours and 45 minutes at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n<p>Cobolli broke early on in the first set, and though Blockx eventually got proceedings back on serve, the Italian took the lead via the tie-break.<\/p>\n<p>However, after saving three break points in the fifth game of the second set, the pressure told on Cobolli as Blockx secured back-to-back breaks to level the match.<\/p>\n<p>And the Belgian followed up with a ruthless third, during which he lost just four points across the six games.<\/p>\n<p>There was no way back for Cobolli in the fourth as he squandered four break points before Blockx booked his place in the last 16 with his first match point.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">2 &#8211; Alexander Blockx is the second player from Belgium to defeat a top-5 seeded at the US Open in Men&#8217;s Singles in the Open Era after Olivier Rochus in 2004 (vs Carlos Moya). Lion.<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/USOpen?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">#USOpen<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/usopen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">@usopen<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/atptour?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">@atptour<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 OptaAce (@OptaAce) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/OptaAce\/status\/2096326466359214364?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">September 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fritz, meanwhile, was knocked out by Francisco Cerundolo despite winning the first two sets.<\/p>\n<p>The home favourite lost 3-6 4-6 6-3 6-4 6-4 in three hours and 42 minutes, with Cerundolo now facing Blockx in the next round.<\/p>\n<p>Blockx produces statement win<\/p>\n<p>Blockx is the second player from Belgium to defeat a top-five seed at the US Open in men&#8217;s singles in the Open Era, after Olivier Rochus in 2004 (vs Carlos Moya).<\/p>\n<p>His performance in the third set was particularly impressive as he won 100% of his first-serve points (8\/8) and 80% of his second-serve points (4\/5).<\/p>\n<p>Cerundolo, meanwhile, claimed his second career top-10 win at a grand slam event, with the other also coming against Fritz in the 2023 French Open.<\/p>\n<p>Both Cobolli and Fritz will see this as a missed opportunity, with world number one Jannik Sinner missing out through injury and Novak Djokovic knocked out early on, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flavio Cobolli and Taylor Fritz were both dumped out of the US Open in the third round on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1484,113,1483,1482,221],"class_list":["post-66593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-taylor-fritz","tag-social","tag-sport","tag-sporty","tag-sportytv","tag-taylor-fritz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66593","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=66593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}