NEW YORK — Top-ranked Jannik Sinner finished off a 7-5, 7-6 (3), 6-2 victory over Jack Draper to reach his first final at the US Open — and second at a Grand Slam tournament his year — after they simultaneously received treatment from trainers on a humid afternoon Friday.
Sinner, a 23-year-old from Italy who was exonerated in a doping case less than a week before the tournament began, needed his left wrist massaged at a changeover after falling during a point he managed to win late in the second set.
During the same break in the action, the 25th-seeded Draper, a 22-year-old from Britain, got medical attention after vomiting twice on the court between points.
While both competitors were being looked at, a vacuum was being used to clean up the green ground behind the baseline where Draper had thrown up. It was, to say the least, an unusual scene at Arthur Ashe Stadium, where the temperature was in the high 70s and the humidity was above 60%.
The second set alone clocked in at 89 minutes, the second longest on the US Open men’s side this year (the Zizou Bergs-Pavel Kotov opening-round fifth set went 96 minutes).
Sinner won the Australian Open in January and will seek his second major championship on Sunday against No. 12 Taylor Fritz or No. 20 Frances Tiafoe.
Good pals Fritz and Tiafoe were scheduled to play each other Friday night in the other men’s semifinal, the first in New York between two Americans in 19 years. One would become the first U.S. man in a Slam title match since Andy Roddick lost to Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2009 — and if either were to defeat Sinner, it would give the United States its first major trophy for a man since Roddick triumphed in New York in 2003.
Sinner, meanwhile, is looking to become the third man in the Open era to win his first two major titles in the same calendar year. He would join Jimmy Connors, who won his first three major titles in 1974, and Guillermo Vilas, who won the French and US Open in 1977.
ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
