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.

Second seed Carlos Alcaraz moved into his third US Open semifinal in four years with a commanding 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 victory over No. 20 Jiri Lehecka. The former world No. 1 reached the last four at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center without dropping a set in the tournament and now sits two wins from a second US Open title.

Alcaraz, who captured his first major at Flushing Meadows in 2022, has not added a hard-court major since, instead collecting two titles apiece at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. On Arthur Ashe Stadium the match lasted one hour, 56 minutes as the Spaniard maintained a brisk tempo and limited openings for Lehecka.

Lehecka had presented a difficult matchup earlier in the season, splitting two three-set encounters with Alcaraz and producing a surprise win in Doha at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open in February. He later lost the revenge match on grass at Queen’s Club two months later. Alcaraz acknowledged the challenge his opponent presents. “I struggle every time that I played against him,” Alcaraz said after reaching the last eight on Sunday. “There is no doubt about it. That means really how difficult it’s play against him.”

Lehecka pointed to the demand for sustained focus against the top seed. “Against a player like Carlos you need to bring your best, and it means that it’s not only about playing one particular shot, because he knows how to react,” Lehecka said after reaching his second career Grand Slam quarterfinal. “That’s his big weapon. You know, that he knows how to react when someone is playing well, when someone is playing this or that.”

In the match Lehecka lost serve early in both the first and second sets, handing Alcaraz the initiative. The Czech produced a stronger start to the third, holding through six games and saving a break point in the seventh to lead 4-3. Two games later Alcaraz recovered from 30-0 to earn a break point and converted after turning defense into offense and drawing a wild forehand error. Serving for the match, Alcaraz won 12 of the final 14 points and closed with a forehand winner despite a few late rain drops.

Felix Auger-Aliassime has rediscovered Grand Slam momentum at the 2025 US Open, compiling four consecutive wins to reach the quarter-finals. That surge followed a run to the quarter-finals at the Cincinnati Masters in his final tournament before New York and a sequence of modest major results that saw him win just five matches across his previous five Grand Slam appearances.

The world No 27 opened in New York with straight-set victories over Billy Harris and Roman Safiullin. In the third round he defeated third seed Alexander Zverev in four sets, marking only his second career top-10 win at a major after beating the same opponent at Wimbledon in 2021. Auger-Aliassime then produced a decisive straight-sets victory over 15th-ranked Andrey Rublev in the fourth round to advance to his fourth major quarter-final and his first since the 2022 Australian Open.

Those results sit alongside long-standing public endorsements from John McEnroe, who has repeatedly predicted big things for the Canadian. In February 2023 McEnroe forecast a Grand Slam title for Auger-Aliassime within a short time frame. “I think he’s going to win a major in the next year, 18 months at the most,” the American was quoted as saying by TSN. “I think he’s made great progress.”

McEnroe offered an earlier, broader vote of confidence in February 2022, describing Auger-Aliassime as a likely future champion. “I like Felix a lot, the Canadian, Auger-Aliassime,” the former world No 1 told khaleejtimes.com at the Expo 2020 Tennis Week in Dubai in February 2022. “He seems the sort of the guy that I think was most likely to win from a bunch of them. I think there’s going to be a handful of guys that are going to do it.

“But right now, he’s making some incredible progress and showing a lot of people that to me, he’s going to be the guy in a few years.”

McEnroe had also expressed belief in both Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov ahead of Wimbledon in 2021: “I think both have made some great strides and progress… I think both of them are going to win majors at some stage in the not-too-distant future.”

Auger-Aliassime’s best major result remains his run to the 2021 US Open semi-finals, where he lost to eventual winner Daniil Medvedev. He has seven ATP Tour titles and reached a career-high ranking of world No 6 in November 2022.