DEFENDING champion Rafael Nadal faced his biggest scare of the US Open at a news conference following his straight-set victory in the third round.
Nadal, the second seed from Spain, was talking about his 7-6 (7-5), 6-1, 7-5 victory against David Nalbandian of Argentina when his face contorted in pain and he suddenly grabbed his head and slid off his chair.
“I just have cramping in my leg, that’s all,” Nadal told reporters after the interview room was locked for about 10 minutes while trainers and his family attended to him. “That’s why I fell. It was so painful.”
The cramps occurred about two hours after the match on Sunday at the National Tennis Center in New York. The 25-year-old Nadal needed two hours and 39 minutes to win in 82-degree Fahrenheit temperature and 65 percent humidity.
Nadal, who will play Gilles Muller of Luxembourg for a place in the quarterfinals at the final Grand-Slam tennis tournament of the year, didn’t answer any questions in English after the cramping.
“It could have happened anywhere, it was just bad luck it happened here,” Nadal said in Spanish while standing in front of the interview desk.
Former champion Andy Roddick and fellow Americans Donald Young and John Isner also advanced to round four with straight-set wins, as did Briton Andy Murray.
Second-seeded Russian Vera Zvonareva led four women into the quarterfinals.
Roddick, the 21st seed from the US and the 2003 champion, beat Frenchman Julien Benneteau, 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), and moved on to a match against David Ferrer, the fifth seed from Spain who defeated Florian Mayer of Germany, 6-1, 6-2, 7-6 (2).
The winner of the Roddick-Ferrer match will face Nadal or Muller in the quarterfinals. Muller of Luxembourg beat Igor Kunitsyn of Russia, 6-1, 6-4, 6-4.
Young, who got into the tournament as a wild-card entrant, won 7-5, 6-4, 6-3 against Juan Ignacio Chela, the 24th seed from Argentina. Young, 22, next faces fourth-seeded Murray, who won, 6-1, 6-4, 6-2, against Feliciano Lopez, the 25th seed from Spain.
Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina, the 2009 US Open champion and the 18th seed this year, lost 4-6, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2, 7-6 (7-3) to Gilles Simon, the 12th seed from France, in a three hour and 57-minute match.
Isner, the 28th seed, defeated fellow American Alex Bogomolov Jr., 7-6 (11-9), 6-4, 6-4.
32-point tiebreaker
Zvonareva, last year’s runner-up, defeated No. 22 Sabine Lisicki of Germany, 6-2, 6-3, to reach a quarterfinal match against Samantha Stosur, the ninth seed from Australia.
Stosur defeated Maria Kirilenko, the 25th seed from Russia, in a match that featured the longest tiebreaker in women’s Grand Slam history. Stosur won, 6-2, 6-7 (15-17), 6-3, after wasting five match points in the 32-point tiebreaker.
“I lost track of the score and didn’t know at one point whether I was serving or receiving,” Stosur said in a news conference. “I’ve got another record here at the US Open, which is cool.”
Stosur, who featured in the tournament’s latest-finishing women’s match last year, has beaten Zvonareva in their past seven career meetings. Unseeded German Angelique Kerber will play Flavia Pennetta, the 26th seed from Italy, in another women’s quarterfinal.
Kerber downed Monica Niculescu of Romania, 6-4, 6-3, while Pennetta beat Peng Shuai of China, 6-4, 7-6 (6).
In Photo: Rafael Nadal's straight-sets win over David Nalbandian was routine, but the scene in his post-match interview was sort of a shocker. (AP)
