New York: Andy Murray contests his sixth US Open quarter-final on Wednesday looking to maintain his stranglehold over Kei Nishikori and take a step closer to a dream title showdown with Novak Djokovic.
Murray won the first of his three career majors at the US Open in 2012 and will be the favourite to make a fourth semi-final at the season’s last Grand Slam.
The world number two has a 7-1 record against Nishikori whose only win over the Briton came at the World Tour Finals in 2014.
This year, Murray came out on top in five sets to help steer Britain past Japan in the Davis Cup before cantering to a straight sets win in the Olympics semi-finals.
All in all, Murray is on a 26-1 run since losing the French Open final to Djokovic in June, collecting the Queen’s Club, Wimbledon and Olympic titles on the way.
But he won’t underestimate the threat posed by Nishikori, who made the final in New York in 2014 having knocked out Djokovic in the semi-finals.
“He played some good stuff at the Olympics and won the bronze,” said Murray who reached the quarter-final with a brutal dismissal of Grigor Dimitrov where he lost just five games.
“I played a really good match against Kei in Rio and I’ll need to do that again if I want to beat him because he’s one of the best players in the world, plays extremely well on hard court.”
The other quarter-final on Wednesday sees 2009 champion Juan Martin del Potro, ranked at 142 but on the comeback trail after three wrist surgeries, tackle third seed Stan Wawrinka, a former Australian and French Open winner.
Del Potro, the lowest-ranked quarter-finalist in 25 years, has a 4-2 head-to-head record over the 31-year-old Swiss including an impressive victory at Wimbledon earlier this year.
However, the two have never met on hard courts. The quarter-final has been dubbed as a battle between Del Potro’s hammer of a forehand and Wawrinka’s precision backhand.
“It’s going to be good challenge to play against him,” said Wawrinka who is in his fourth successive US Open quarter-final and is a two-time semi-finalist. “It’s going to be important to try to dictate and be aggressive on the court.”
Wawrinka set up the marquee quarter-final showdown with Del Potro with a 6-4 6-1 6-7(5) 6-3 victory over Illya Marchenko of Ukraine on Monday.
Third seed Wawrinka, winner of the 2014 Australian Open and 2015 French Open, overpowered the 63rd-ranked Marchenko, who reached the fourth round when 14th-seeded Nick Kyrgios retired with a hip injury while trailing two sets to one.
Twice during Monday’s match, Marchenko received treatment on his right knee, which was taped between the second and third sets and massaged during the third-set changeover at 2-1, but he battled on to force a fourth set.
The victory by the hard-hitting Swiss set up a clash with big-serving Del Potro, who won 6-3 3-2 when eighth seed Dominic Thiem of Austria retired with a knee injury.
