Six Top-10 Men's Seeds Are Out of the US Open, Taylor Fritz Blows Two-Set Lead to Cerundolo

The US Open men's draw lost its ninth seed and its most talked-about American hope in the same weekend that saw half of the tournament's top-10 seeds go home.

Taylor Fritz, the 2024 finalist and the highest-ranked American man left in the field, led Argentina's Francisco Cerundolo two sets to love and had broken serve early in the third. He then lost 12 of the next 13 games he needed to win the match, falling 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 to the 24th-seeded Cerundolo, according to the BBC.

According to the Guardian, Fritz had three break points in the fifth set for a chance to serve out the match at 5-3. He didn't convert any of them, and Cerundolo closed it out instead.

"I don't even know what to say," Fritz told reporters afterward, as quoted by the BBC, Yahoo Sports and Tennis365. "I don't really want to talk to anybody, see anybody. I need to get out for a couple days and then get back to work. I don't know how I let that happen today."

Cerundolo, for his part, said he needed several sets to find his level. "He was playing way better than me the first two sets," Cerundolo said, according to Tennis365. "I started getting into it step by step and I think fourth and fifth I played really good tennis."

A wide-open draw got wider

Less than an hour after Fritz's exit, fifth seed Flavio Cobolli of Italy, the French Open finalist, lost 6-7 (4-7), 6-3, 6-0, 6-3 to Belgium's Alexander Blockx, the BBC reported. Cobolli won the first-set tiebreak, then collapsed in the third set, losing it to love in 20 minutes.

"I think my energy was a little bit lower than the other days," Cobolli said. "I feel a little bit more tight and maybe more tired."

Those two results made it six top-10 seeds eliminated in the tournament's first week, per the BBC's count. German top seed Alexander Zverev was not one of them. The French Open champion beat Chilean 25th seed Alejandro Tabilo 6-2, 7-6 (7-2), 6-2, saving two set points along the way, and finished the match at 1:09 a.m. local time, according to the BBC. It was his first straight-sets win of the tournament after two previous five-set matches that each ended around 2 a.m.

With Fritz and Cobolli gone, Zverev and 14th seed Learner Tien are the only remaining top-20 players in the top half of the draw, the BBC noted. Tien advanced with his own marathon, a five-set win over Czech 17th seed Jakub Menšík that finished at 1:35 a.m. Zverev's next opponent is Italian 21st seed Luciano Darderi.

Why this draw matters for American tennis

The backdrop to all of this is an unusually open men's field. World number one Jannik Sinner is out with injury, and defending champion Carlos Alcaraz is playing his first tournament back from a four-month layoff, according to the Guardian. Novak Djokovic, the 39-year-old former champion, was eliminated in the first round.

That combination has fueled speculation about the first American man to win the US Open since Andy Roddick in 2003, the Guardian reported. Fritz was widely seen as the best-positioned American to end that drought after reaching the 2024 final. His exit leaves Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, Tommy Paul, Alex Michelsen and Learner Tien as the remaining American men in the draw, per the BBC.

The Guardian's coverage adds a detail the wire-style BBC and Yahoo pieces leave out: seven American men started the day in the draw, and in the bottom half of the bracket, an American man occupied every one of the four fourth-round matches decided the day before. That context underscores how much American interest remains in the tournament even with Fritz gone, and how directly his collapse serves as what the Guardian called "a warning" to the other Americans chasing the same history.

Cerundolo now faces 28th seed Blockx in the fourth round for a quarterfinal spot. Whether either can carry the run further, or whether Zverev's path to a final without facing a top-10 opponent holds up, will play out over the tournament's second week.