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.
Roddick was watching on Wednesday while Tiafoe, who had dominated world No. 2 Rafael Nadal on Monday in the fourth round, fired 18 aces with serves that touched 137 mph and averaged 121.9 mph on his first serves. Tiafoe hit 47 winners to 31 by Rublev, who was seeded ninth in a field that lost stars such as Nadal, No. 1 Daniil Medvedev and No. 4 Stefanos Tsitsipas in early rounds. Tiafoe also won 32 of 41 points at the net.
His semifinal opponent on Friday will be the winner of the Wednesday evening match between No. 3 Carlos Alcaraz of Spain and No. 11 Jannik Sinner of Italy. “I’ll sit back and let them battle all night, hopefully,” he said.
Tiafoe, 24, was born in Hyattsville, Md., to parents who separately left war-ravaged Sierra Leone behind for a better life in the U.S. and met and married in this country. Tiafoe and his twin brother Franklin often slept in his father’s office at the tennis center after his father was hired as the custodian of the complex, which includes courts and a school.
Tiafoe loved the game and was touted for stardom as a youngster, but he had difficulty finding consistency, as often happens to young players. His previous best performance in a Grand Slam tournament was reaching the quarterfinals of the 2019 Australian Open. He came to New York seeded No. 22 but has lost only one set here, to 22-time Grand Slam singles champion Nadal, and is 6-0 in tiebreaks.
The crowd roared when he wrapped up the victory, ran over to hug his supporters who were sitting courtside, and ad-libbed some dance steps. The crowd also loved it when he said, “We got some more,” meaning the two matches that stand between him and the first Grand Slam singles title for a U.S. man since Roddick won at Flushing Meadows in 2003.
