This US Open delivered an unusually heavy load of five-setters, and the consequences were plain. Three players, Flavio Cobolli, Kamil Majchrzak, and Daniel Altmaier, retired on Saturday after winning marathons on Thursday. Tommy Paul seemed to run out of gas after playing his second wee-hour five-setter in a row. The player who beat him, Alexander Bublik, then experienced a similar collapse against Jannik Sinner.

The long-running argument over whether men should keep best-of-five at the majors continues. As one observer put it when hearing best-of-five called “the ultimate test in tennis,” the response is often, “So why don’t the women get to take the same test?”

Still, many regard five-set Slams as sacrosanct. They have produced epic, defining moments and have not, historically, shortened careers or led to an obvious rash of retirements. Yet the modern game is more physical, equipment is more advanced, and prolonged baseline warfare can turn best-of-five into four-hour battles of attrition. Even winners can be so spent that they are compromised for the next match.

One proposal to ease the load while preserving the format is to adopt no-ad scoring. Eliminating deuce games caps the maximum points in a game at seven and thus limits the maximum number of points in a set. Shorter matches mean less cumulative wear and tear. The strategy and winner-take-all aspect of the no-ad point would add another element of suspense to matches and could make long fifth sets easier for fans to watch.

The Roland Garros final between Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz underlines the issue: they played 56 games and 352 points in those games, plus 33 more points in three tiebreakers. They played “at least five deuce games,” and the first game went to five deuces. No-ad would have made that final shorter, though by how much is a question worth answering.

No-ad is not new to the sport. The author played it in high school and college in the early 1990s, and the college game has more recently returned to no-ad. Change in tennis often needs a champion and a pathway through junior and lower-level events to build acceptance. The question is whether no-ad could be that pathway to protect players while keeping five-set drama intact.

Taylor Fritz arrives in the 2025 US Open quarter-finals as the last American remaining, carrying the weight of a tough draw. The world No 4 and fourth seed, who was runner-up at this event in 2024, now meets Novak Djokovic, the seventh seed in New York.

Djokovic’s fitness and motivation have come under scrutiny across 2025 and during this tournament, and he struggled early in Flushing Meadows. His fourth-round victory over Jan-Lennard Struff was described as his most convincing performance of the event so far and propelled him into a 14th US Open men’s singles quarter-final. That total is second only to Jimmy Connors (17) in the Open Era.

The head-to-head presents an even greater obstacle for Fritz. The American has lost all 10 of his previous matches against Djokovic. Their most recent meeting in a US Open quarter-final came in 2023, when Djokovic defeated Fritz 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 on his way to a major title.

For Djokovic, the match with Fritz will mark his 64th Grand Slam singles quarter-final overall. Notably, Flushing Meadows remains the only major at which he has never been beaten at the quarter-final stage. On 13 prior occasions that Djokovic reached the last eight at the US Open, he progressed each time to at least the semi-final.

Across his career he has been eliminated before the quarter-final round on five occasions: 2005, 2006, 2019, 2020, and 2024. His first US Open quarter-final victory came in 2007, when he beat Carlos Moya 6-4, 7-6(7), 6-1 en route to his first major final. Djokovic then recorded a sequence of ten straight quarter-final wins at the US Open, and by 2018 had made 11 quarter-finals in 11 appearances after withdrawing in 2017 due to injury.

His records at the other majors underline his consistency: 12-3 in Australian Open quarter-finals, 13-5 at Roland Garros (not including his 2024 withdrawal), and 14-2 at Wimbledon. Fritz faces one of the sternest tests possible in New York as Djokovic seeks to maintain his unblemished US Open quarter-final run.

A different version of Jannik Sinner appeared on Arthur Ashe Stadium on Monday night, and his words before the match foreshadowed the intensity that followed. Speaking to Anna Wintour prior to the last-16 clash in New York, he concluded the exchange with: “Now it’s time for revenge.”

From the opening point Sinner imposed himself. He dismantled a less than fully fit Alexander Bublik, showing no mercy as he controlled the match from start to finish. Bublik met Sinner’s dominance with self-deprecating humour: “You’re so good, this is insane. I’m not bad.”

Sinner attributed part of the result to the toll on his opponent after a long previous match against Tommy Paul. “He had a very tough match the last match,” said Sinner. “He didn’t serve as well as he usually does. I’m very happy. The first time this year I can play the night match here and it makes so, so big difference.”

He also reflected on the flow of the contest and the days when things do not click for an opponent. “Sometimes we have some days off, where certain things don’t work. Some players have some problems behind the scenes, you never know.

“At the end of the day we try to make the sport as interesting as possible. At times I felt today I was playing some great tennis.

“I managed to break him very early. It gave me then the confidence to serve a little bit better and play from the back of the court a bit better.

“It was a fast match but at the same time from my point of view it is good. People come here to see some great tennis matches, some great battles and it’s not always that is the case.

“I don’t know what he said or if he was in here, but I can just judge from my point of view and how I managed to play and it was a good performance from my side.”

The Italian suggested he was “not a machine” when questions came about his dip in form after that match, but against Bublik he was unmistakably on a mission. Bublik had not faced a single break in the 59 times he served at this US Open until this match; Sinner broke him precisely two minutes into the contest and never relented.

Sinner’s victory extended his Grand Slam winning run on hard courts to 25 matches. With the tournament moving forward, a potential meeting with Carlos Alcaraz in the final remains a compelling possibility.