Juan Carlos Ferrero believes match timing at the US Open could tilt the semi-final between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic. The pair meet in the last four in New York for a ninth career semi-final clash, with Djokovic leading their head-to-head 5-3 and holding a 3-0 record on hard courts.

Alcaraz arrives at the semi-final without dropping a set in the tournament and with an exceptional run of form, having won 35 of his last 36 matches, the only loss coming to world No 1 Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon final. Ferrero, a former world No 1 and his coach since 2019, stresses that form alone does not make his pupil the favourite. “Carlos is playing spectacularly, with a lot of confidence, but I don’t dare say that he is a favourite,” he said. “Novak will give everything, it will be very tough.

“What happened in Australia was painful because of how everything happened, but the conditions will be different here.

“We played there at night and that favored him a little, with a lower ball bounce.

“The ball was flatter and that suited him better.

“Here, I think that if we play during the day, it will be better for us.”

Ferrero has also highlighted Alcaraz’s mental progress in New York. “We have always known that he was very good tennis-wise, but on a mental level I am seeing him better than ever,” the Spaniard stated. “In this tournament he is showing that consistency of not having ups and downs and reaching the potential that we saw he could have.

“He is still very young, despite the experience he has. It is in the process of maturing and improving. Little by little he was giving details of improving, but in this tournament is where he is being most noticed.

“He barely makes five, six or seven errors per set. That is the difference compared to before.”

Djokovic, the 24-time Grand Slam champion, has battled physical issues at the event, taking medical time-outs for shoulder, foot and back concerns. After his quarter-final win over Taylor Fritz he admitted concerns about freshness. “Good thing about the schedule is now that I have two days without a match, so that helps a lot,” he said.

“So I don’t feel very fresh at the moment. But hopefully in two days will be different.

“It’s not going to get easier, I tell you that. But look, as I said, I’m going to try to take one day at a time, really take care of my body, try to relax and recover.

“The next couple of days is really key for me to really get my body in shape and ready to battle five sets if it’s needed.

“So I just would really love that, would love to be fit enough to play and to play, you know, potentially five sets with Carlos. And I know that my best tennis is going to be required, but I rise to the occasion.

“Normally, I like to play the big matches on a big stage. It’s just that I’m not really sure how the body is going to feel in the next few days. But, you know, I’m going to do my very best with my team to be fit for that.

“There’s going to be a lot of running involved, that’s for sure. I mean, there’s not going to be short points.”

Amanda Anisimova arrives in New York having produced the best stretch of her career so far in 2025. The 24-year-old American reached her first Grand Slam final at Wimbledon earlier this summer, beating world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-final, and collected her first WTA 1000 title at the Qatar Open in February.

Anisimova is into the US Open quarter-final for the first time and faces Iga Swiatek, a rematch that comes weeks after the American failed to win a single game versus the Pole at the All England Club. Beyond the immediate task of getting past a six-time major champion, this fortnight presents a major ranking opportunity.

This season Anisimova has climbed steadily. After returning to the tour in 2024 she broke into the top 20 following her victory over Jelena Ostapenko in the Doha final. A fourth-round showing at Roland Garros moved her into the top 15 and her run to a maiden major final at Wimbledon pushed her into the top 10. She reached a career-high of world No 7 after Wimbledon but entered the US Open at No 9.

Thanks to results in New York, she is guaranteed to be ranked at least seventh in the world after the tournament. Current world No 7 Zheng Qinwen is absent due to injury, while No 8 Jasmine Paolini was beaten in round three, opening the door for movement in the top ten.

A direct WTA Live Rankings battle with compatriot and world No 4 Jessica Pegula is unfolding. Pegula, who has 1,300 ranking points to defend as the 2024 runner-up, sits provisionally at world No 6 on 4,383 points, with Anisimova on 4,289. A victory over Swiatek would move Anisimova to 4,639 points and ahead of Pegula and Madison Keys, who holds 4,579. With Keys out in the first round, that would guarantee Anisimova a minimum ranking of world No 6 next Monday.

A further run to the final would lift her to 5,159 points, overtaking Mirra Andreeva on 4,793 and delivering a first top-five ranking. Only Pegula, by winning the title and hypothetically beating her in the final, could prevent that outcome.

It will not be easy to beat Swiatek, but Anisimova’s season suggests the possibility of another breakthrough in New York.

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.