Frances Tiafoe breaks Alex Michelsen’s heart as hug produces enduring image of U.S. Open

NEW YORK — After four hours and 40 minutes of tennis, after Frances Tiafoe watched one last forehand passing shot curl off his strings and down the line, there was only one thing left to do.

Tiafoe sprinted forward — not to his team, but to Alex Michelsen, who fell to weeping in his arms. The 21-year-old Californian is one of Tiafoe’s tennis brothers. He wrapped Michelsen in a massive bear hug, consoling him as Michelsen buried his face in Tiafoe’s neck and shook with tears.

Tiafoe didn’t let him go. He’s been there so many times in the past two years, including on this court in 2024, when he gave up a lead in the semifinal against Taylor Fritz. On Tuesday afternoon, and into the evening, he was on the other side of that cruel tennis equation.

With Michelsen, the big-serving talent, on the verge of the biggest win of his career, Tiafoe grabbed hold of a lifeline from a wobbling opponent and improbably climbed all the way back from two sets and 5-3 down to win 5-7, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 7-6(10-6) and reach the U.S. Open last four, where he will face Ben Shelton, conqueror of Carlos Alcaraz.

“It’s the quarterfinals of a Slam, you got to leave it out there,” Tiafoe said.

That much he did.

Tiafoe was gone, then he was back, then he seemed gone again. Then, he rose once more to head off a last charge from Michelsen with a flurry of aces and nasty slices that had seemed so far beyond his abilities just a couple of hours before.

Over the last seven games, the match became everything that it seemed to promise when the day started. Tiafoe and Michelsen cracked serves and charged the net, and feathered drop volleys and found angles and seams in the court that only they saw.

When it counted most, Tiafoe found a couple more of them. He cracked a forehand down the line for an early edge in the tiebreak, then kicked a second serve beyond the useful range of even Michelsen’s long reach. Michelsen would get even, but then Tiafoe blasted a forehand return across the court for a winner. It gave him the most precious lead: the one he never gave back.

Tiafoe raced across the finish line with an ace, another unreturnable second serve, and then that curling winner down the line that he has probably hit 10,000 times since he picked up a tennis racket, but never when it counted like this.

And then he had Michelsen in his arms, trying to keep his emotions in check and failing in the best way, as Tiafoe gave him the words that he’s gotten too many times before.

“He was saying a lot of, you know, nice personal things, you know, you’ll be there, when I’m older, you’re going to be here, and we’re going play again in this type of circumstance and all that good stuff,” Michelsen said in a news conference later.

“He’s a great guy for consoling me in that moment.”

“I really like Alex, I really, really do, and I just wanted to come up there and just dap him up,” Tiafoe said in his news conference. “I didn’t think it was going to be as long as it was, but I understand the moment.”

For more than two hours and nearly three sets, Tiafoe had been one of the worst versions of his tennis self. In the second set, he landed just 35 percent of his first serves, and Michelsen was mostly crushing him on his second serves. For a player who rises for his home Grand Slam and puts on a show like few others, it was awkward.

Tiafoe described himself as slow and flat.

“It wasn’t good,” he said.

But after a decade on the tour, he knows how quickly a match can change. If a player hangs around and keeps pushing, sometimes all it takes is a point.

“You see a little opening window; you see turning points. One point can … Four hours later, in a battle just because of one point. Tennis is a unique sport like that.”

But after playing something close to lights-out tennis, as he had done all tournament, Michelsen felt the moment when he was on the edge of the last four. Up 7-5, 6-3, 5-4, he produced two double faults to start the game that could have gotten him into the tennis promised land.

He didn’t make a single first serve in it.

Michelsen did and didn’t know what went wrong. He started thinking about being four points away from the semifinals.

“It’s a horrible way to look at it, obviously, because you can only play one point at a time,” he said. “Honestly, sometimes my arm, I’m like, oh, it’s so tight. I wasn’t that tight, and I just kind of missed a couple serves, and after I double-faulted twice, it was like, here we go. It’s not good.”

Tiafoe broke. Then he held serve. Then he broke again, to make it a two-sets-to-one deficit.

And then the U.S. Open became Tiafoe’s party once more. He has now made the semifinals three times since 2022, even after spending so much of a frustrating afternoon searching for the service box.

At the same time, what was almost Michelsen’s fifth consecutive straight-sets win of the tournament turned into every tennis player’s nightmare.

Before Tiafoe, no one had been able to solve the problems Michelsen has been causing everyone on the opposite side of the net to him the past 10 days.

Michelsen, the world No. 46, has had some previous success in Grand Slams, making the fourth round of the Australian Open last year. Everyone in the game speaks highly of his assets, especially his serve, and his style of big-ball tennis that can pin opponents behind the baseline when he gets on the offensive.

But even he concedes he is far from a finished product, especially when it comes to moving his long-limbed, 6-foot-4-inch frame around a tennis court.

He’s far from what he described as the “giraffe on ice” he was a couple of years ago, but he says he has a long way to go.

Fortunately for him, early on, Tiafoe didn’t come close to exploiting that shortcoming Tuesday. He was too busy trying to get something, or really anything, out of his serve.

For much of the afternoon, he was winning less than 60 percent of the points on his first serve, and Michelsen was putting more than 80 percent of those first serves back in the court.

Meanwhile, Michelsen was having the opposite experience, letting his long levers create the easy power that has been kryptonite for each of his opponents. He got a nice first-round matchup with Federico Cinà, a 19-year-old qualifier.

But then he registered a statement win in the second round, when he thumped compatriot Brandon Nakashima, one of the most in-form players in the sport, in straight sets.

By ranking, he was on his way to registering upsets in his next three matches, beating Daniel Mérida of Spain, Tomás Martín Etcheverry of Argentina and then Tiafoe. It just hadn’t looked that way. Michelsen had played every match like a favorite.

Until he didn’t. There are wobbles in tennis, and then there is what happened to Michelsen on Tuesday afternoon. There was a hint of it when he served at 4-3 in the third set. He floated a sliced backhand long and let Tiafoe jump on a second serve and send him running. Improbably, Tiafoe seemed on the verge of clawing his way back into the match.

But Michelsen cracked an unreturnable serve, and then an ace, and then a big forehand winner to get the game back to deuce. Two big serves later, he was a game away from the last four.

He chugged some water and his sports drink on the next changeover, toweled off, then went back to work.

Then the trouble really started. When Michelsen sent a forehand long over the baseline to give Tiafoe the game and a lifeline, Tiafoe bent at his knees and let out a roar that bounced around the concrete stadium.

For the next 75 minutes, it was all Tiafoe, the electric crowd favorite suddenly rediscovering his serve, whipping his forehand and jetting all over the court like a roadrunner.

And then, he stalled. Finally, even after 3 1/2 hours, he fell 3-0 behind in the final set. The confident version of Michelsen returned. And then so did the wobbly version.

Serving at 3-1, 15-30, Michelsen twisted a forehand way off the court. Two points later, with Tiafoe pinned in his forehand corner, Michelsen hit an open forehand back at him instead of into the open court.

Tiafoe revved once more. This time, he didn’t stop. Twice 2 points from defeat when serving down 5-4, he cracked three aces in 4 points. Fifth set, 5-5. Why stop there?

Two games later, they headed into the match tiebreak. First to 10 points for a spot in the final four. Tiafoe was solid for the first 15 of them, to open up a 9-6 lead. Then he cracked the pass down the line to end it. But for one last thing to do.

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