Sinner dispatched Chris O’Connell quickly, avoiding an early upset unlike Djokovic and Alcaraz.
Jannik Sinner never gave his third-round opponent at the U.S. Open on Saturday, Chris O’Connell, even a moment to contemplate pulling off the sort of monumental upset that eliminated Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz.
“It shows that this sport is unpredictable. Whenever you drop a little bit of your level — if it’s mental, if it’s tennis-wise or physical — at the end, it has a huge impact on the result,” Sinner said. “Both opponents who they lost against, they played some incredible tennis. And it happens.”
Not to the No. 1-ranked Sinner, who is suddenly the favorite to win the men’s championship at Flushing Meadows. He won the first five games and 21 of the first 29 points to make quite clear how things would go at Arthur Ashe Stadium and wrapped up a 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 victory over O’Connell in under two hours.
“I felt like he was on from the get-go,” O’Connell said. “I felt a little bit clueless, to be honest. … Every single shot, I just felt like I had to do something with it, because he was just on me. He was suffocating me.”
Stepping on court less than 15 hours after Djokovic’s loss to Alexei Popyrin, and two days after Alcaraz’s loss to Botic van de Zandschulp, Sinner was as dominant as can be in every facet of the sport. With 23-time major champion Serena Williams watching from an Ashe suite, Sinner struck 15 aces. He never faced a break point. He won five of O’Connell’s 12 service games. He finished with more than twice as many winners, 46, as unforced errors, 22.
