Fritz and Cobolli Exit US Open in Shocking Upsets

Taylor Fritz walked off Arthur Ashe Stadium looking stunned, searching for answers that would not come.

Two sets up, a break up in the third, the American ninth seed had one foot in the second week of his home Slam. Ninety minutes later he was out, part of a wreckage of top seeds littering the first week of the US Open.

Francisco Cerundolo, stubborn and unflinching, turned a routine defeat into a five-set ambush, winning 3-6 4-6 6-3 6-4 6-4 to reach the fourth round.

“I don't even know what to say,” Fritz admitted afterwards. “I don't really want to talk to anybody, see anybody. I need to get out for a couple days and then get back to work. I don't know how I let that happen today.”

On a night when the top half of the draw cracked wide open, Fritz’s collapse felt like the most painful twist yet for American hopes.

Fritz lets a golden chance slip

For two sets, this looked like a statement performance. Fritz controlled the baseline, dictated with his forehand, and snatched an early break in the third. Cerundolo looked outmatched, the crowd settling in for a straightforward home win.

Then the match flipped.

Cerundolo tightened his patterns, cut out the errors, and began dragging Fritz into longer rallies. The American’s level dipped just enough. The third set slipped 6-3. The tension crept in. The initiative went with it.

By the fourth, Cerundolo was the one swinging freely. Fritz, a finalist at Flushing Meadows in 2024, suddenly looked burdened by the occasion and the expectation. Breaks were traded, chances came and went, but the Argentine held his nerve and his serve when it mattered most.

The fifth felt like a reckoning. The crowd tried to haul Fritz back into it; Cerundolo refused to blink. One break was enough. The American’s forehand, so commanding early on, misfired in the closing stretch, and with it went a path that had seemed almost carved out for him.

He had been bidding to become the fifth American man into the last 16. With no Jannik Sinner in the field and Carlos Alcaraz only recently back from a wrist injury, talk had started to build: 23 years after Andy Roddick’s title, could this finally be the year of another home winner?

That dream is still alive. But not for Fritz, and not without the lingering sense that he has let a rare opportunity escape.

Cobolli crumbles as Blockx surges

If Fritz’s defeat was a slow bleed, Flavio Cobolli’s exit was a nosedive.

Less than an hour after the American walked off court, the Italian fifth seed followed him out of the tournament, beaten 7-6 (7-4) 3-6 0-6 3-6 by Belgium’s Alexander Blockx.

Cobolli edged a tight first set in a tie-break and looked poised to steady himself after dropping the second. Instead, he vanished. The third set disappeared in 20 brutal minutes, a 6-0 blitz that ripped the match away from him.

“I think my energy was a little bit lower than the other days,” Cobolli said. “I feel a little bit more tight and maybe more tired.”

Once Blockx seized control, Cobolli never truly threatened to wrest it back. The Belgian, seeded 28th, kept pressing, kept taking the ball early, and the Italian’s resistance faded.

“Alex is very good guy outside the court. He deserved to win, and he won,” Cobolli added, even pledging to support his conqueror in the next round.

Blockx now meets Cerundolo in the fourth round, with a place in the quarter-finals at stake. A week ago, few would have circled that as a route to the last eight. Now it is reality.

A men’s draw in chaos

The shocks have not come in a trickle. They have crashed through the men’s draw from day one.

The tone was set immediately when Novak Djokovic, chasing a record 25th Grand Slam title, fell in five sets to Argentina’s Mariano Navone. The fourth seed, in tears after the defeat to the world number 49, left a gaping hole in the top half.

Arthur Fils followed. The 10th seed from France, tipped by many as a dark horse, exited in the first round in four sets to former world number three Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Then the higher seeds started tumbling in sequence.

• Felix Auger-Aliassime, the third seed and the highest-ranked casualty so far, went out in round two against Karen Khachanov.
• Sixth seed Alex de Minaur joined him at the same stage, another pillar of the draw removed.

Those early exits seemed to clear the runway for Fritz and Cobolli. Instead, both stumbled just as the field opened up.

The result is a top half that looks almost unrecognisable. Apart from top seed Alexander Zverev, only two top-20 players remain there: 14th seed Learner Tien and 17th seed Jakub Mensik. They face each other on Friday, meaning one of them will be gone before the second week even begins.

The arithmetic is stark. Zverev could, in theory, reach the final without facing a single top-10 opponent and without meeting anyone inside the top 20 before the semi-finals.

In a Slam that began with Djokovic’s tears and has now claimed Fritz and Cobolli, the German suddenly stands alone as the established force in his half. The question is whether he can turn that advantage into something more than a tantalising possibility.

British doubles fortunes mixed

Away from the singles chaos, British players carved out contrasting stories in the men’s doubles.

Arthur Fery and Joshua Paris battled through a tight three-setter, beating Anirudh Chandrasekar and Ivan Liutarevich 6-4 5-7 6-4 to move on. Neal Skupski and his American partner Christian Harrison, the fifth seeds, were more clinical, racing through a 6-0 7-6 (7-3) win over Arthur Reymond and Luca Sanchez.

For David Stevenson and Marcus Willis, the margins went the other way. They pushed 11th seeds Sadio Doumbia and Fabien Reboul to a deciding set but fell 5-7 7-6 (7-2) 6-3.

On a day when favourites fell and the draw reshaped itself in real time, those doubles results barely grazed the headlines. The story at Flushing Meadows is bigger, stranger, and suddenly wide open.

With Djokovic gone, Fritz beaten, Cobolli out, and Zverev staring at a road that looks far less daunting on paper than any Slam path should, the men’s tournament has turned into something else entirely.

Now it is about who dares to grab it.