Felix Auger-Aliassime cleared for takeoff in airport-laden Queens

NEW YORK—As exciting as it is to watch two wonderful, near-perfect players square off against each other on a grand occasion, there’s also a lot to be said for matches featuring have-nots—struggling or flawed players hoping to right a listing ship, or a career that has hit some obstacle and ground to a halt.

Labor Day at the US Open brought us an intriguing fourth-round clash to get the ball rolling on Arthur Ashe Stadium, featuring two players in the latter category: Andrey Rublev, the mercurial 27-year old Russian ranked No. 15, and mellow, No. 27-ranked Felix Auger-Aliassime.

Rublev often gets into Grand Slam quarterfinals, only to stall there with startling regularity: his 0-10 record is an Open Era record. Auger-Aliassime, the Montreal native who exploded on the scene at age 21 in 2021, hit his peak ranking (No. 6) the following year. But since then he’s faded from relevance and is now trying to re-ignite his career.

Consider FAA en fuego. He buried Rublev on Monday in a blizzard of forehands and blazing serves, winning in just two hours and 16 minutes, 7-5, 6-3, 6-4. Some of his first serves broke the 130 MPH barrier. FAA belted almost twice as many winners as Rublev (42-22). He also made 15 more errors (33-18) than Rublev, but that was mostly a testament to the degree of command FAA imposed on the fracas..

“It was a good win considering our head-to-head (Rublev led going in, 7-1) ,considering how good he is as a player,” Auger-Aliassime said. “I was down 4-2 in the first set, but once I settled into the match I felt much better about my chances. From that moment on I felt like I was putting a lot of pressure on him.”

The result was an eye-opener, considering that on paper Rublev was the heavy favorite thanks to that head-to-head advantage. But four of their most recent matches were bitter, protracted battles. And this latest one offered a choice, additional prize: the winner would get a quarterfinal berth in a decimated portion of the draw, with only No. 8 seed Alex de Minaur to beat to make the semis.

It was a revelation to watch FAA striking the ball. Granted, he was enjoying an exceptional day. But even at the best of times, not many players can take the racquet out of Rublev’s hands and so suppress his explosive shots. As Sam Querrey said on air, in response to an observation by his boothmate, “Rublev has never hit a slice in his life. He’s going to hit hard from either side, every point. If your serve is off and you put the ball right in the pocket he’s going to make you pay. ”

The problem for Rublev was that he could not make FAA pay, because you must be able to get to the ball to take a good whack at it. He was denied that pleasure. This performance was a reminder of Auger-Aliassime’s powers at the breakout stage of his career, as well as a demonstration of his mighty forehand.

“Well, [the forehand] has always been my strength and my instinct growing up was to have the match be in my hands,” Auger-Aliassime said. “I was never a kid that was playing and waiting for the mistake. Sometimes it played against me. I would miss plenty as a kid, and then I had to kind of know how to use it well, and to be precise and consistent. It’s a similar thing now at a higher level.”

It was a revelation to watch FAA striking the ball. ... even at the best of times, not many players can take the racquet out of Rublev’s hands and so suppress his explosive shots.

This was an impressive bit of self-knowledge, because anyone watching the match could see that while FAA was clocking those forehands, he wasn’t doing it with full cuts or going for broke, and he wasn’t trying to clean lines.. The shot was artfully modulated, and deadly.

“At the start I missed a few, I spread a few kind of far [wide], but then I believed that it was just a question of time that I'm going to start hitting my targets,” he said. “Once I did, it became very difficult for him.”

Auger-Aliassime is a self-contained young man, not given to great expressions of feeling or reflecting on his past. He seems to have a strong sense of privacy. He pulled off a great upset in the previous round, eliminating No. 3 seed Alexander Zverev. But when reporters prodded him to extol the wonders of New York, and why it's so “special” to play here, he declined to play ball.

“Well, New York and Australia, the hard courts, obviously for me I think they’re better. I think that's one of the reasons. And then, I don't know, what else? Tough to say. Do I like the crowd's energy or the city? I don't believe in all that stuff. I'm more practical, like. . . okay, how am I playing?”

Just why Auger-Aliassime faded so completely, for so long, is something of a mystery.

The reality, though, was that FAA had not played well in the year’s previous majors. He won the first two sets of his second-round match with Alejandro Davidovich Fokina at the Australian Open, only to go down in five. At Roland Garros, he allowed another two-set lead slip away, this time to Matteo Arnaldi. And at Wimbledon, on a surface that could not be more suited to his monstrous serves and forehands, he bowed out in four sets in round two to No. 125 Jan Lennard Struff.

Just why Auger-Aliassime faded so completely, for so long, is something of a mystery. Sure, injuries played a role. So did periodic losses of confidence. But basic maturity may be the most overlooked essential in a young player’s development. One minute, Auger-Aliassime was just this nice, polite kid from Quebec, and the next he was the Next Big Thing in tennis, walking the red carpet with the stars at New York’s Met Gala (to his credit, though, he wore a simple tuxedo). Such transitions can be confusing, and distracting.

“Throughout the years I still had good moments,” Auger-Aliassime said. “I was around 25, 30 in the world. It was not like I was losing all the time. But for sure there were months where I was thinking, ‘Okay, what's my approach tactically with my game?’ Once I got the physical (injuries) things kind of sorted out, it was like, ‘Okay, now I'm healthy again. How am I playing?’”

The answer to that on Labor Day here in New York was, “pretty darned good.” Good enough to punch through to a semifinal again, perhaps even good enough to go even further.