NEW YORK — Frances Tiafoe’s improbably wonderful American dream reached new heights on Wednesday, when the son of immigrants from Sierra Leone advanced to the semifinals of the US Open with a dynamic and decisive victory over Andrey Rublev of Russia. He celebrated with screams of pure joy, which were amplified by the enthralled crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Tiafoe, who was introduced to tennis when his father worked on the construction crew building the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., stared down Rublev to win tiebreaks in each of the first two sets and seized control of the third set by breaking the Russian’s serve for a 4-3 lead. With his 7-6 (3), 7-6 (0), 6-4 triumph Tiafoe became the first American man to reach the semifinals at Flushing Meadows since Andy Roddick got that far in 2006.
“Wow. It’s crazy,” he said during an on-court interview after the match.
