Raducanu, 18, 1st qualifier in US Open semis; Zverev wins

In the men's quarterfinals Wednesday, Olympic champion and 2020 US Open runner-up Alexander Zverev stretched his winning streak to 16 matches with a 7-6 (6), 6-3, 6-4 victory over unseeded Lloyd Harris.

Harris went up 5-3 in the opening set but got broken while serving for it. He then held a set point at 6-5 in the tiebreaker but couldn't convert, and the fourth-seeded Zverev was on his way. The 24-year-old from Germany grabbed the next three points for that set, then moved out to leads of 3-0 in the second and 4-0 in the third.

"Somehow managed to win that first set," Zverev said. "Loosened me up a little bit." Shortly after he lost to Dominic Thiem in last year's final at Flushing Meadows, Zverev was accused by a former girlfriend of domestic abuse, allegations he repeatedly has denied.

His second consecutive US Open semifinal will come against No. 1 Novak Djokovic, who is bidding for a calendar-year Grand Slam, or No. 6 Matteo Berrettini. Their quarterfinal, a rematch of the Wimbledon final won by Djokovic in July, was scheduled for Wednesday night.

"I am going to watch it, like everybody else, I guess," Zverev said. "I hope it goes for 8 hours and 30 minutes." Raducanu made her Grand Slam debut at Wimbledon thanks to a wild-card invitation and she made it to the fourth round before stopping during that match when she had trouble breathing.

That tournament allowed the world to begin to get familiar with her style of crisp, clean tennis, managing to attack early in points from the baseline without sacrificing accuracy. By the end against the 11th-seeded Bencic, a US Open semifinalist in 2019, Raducanu had nearly twice as many winners as unforced errors, 23-12.

She also showed gumption, both at the beginning, when she was undaunted by a 3-1 deficit and claimed the next five games, and at the end, when she fell behind love-30 each of the last two times she served before hanging on.

"Obviously she's very solid," said Bencic, who hadn't dropped a set in the tournament before Wednesday, "to just kind of stay tough till the end and just play her game and kind of not let me in again." When Bencic double-faulted to get broken and fall behind 3-2 in the second set, she trudged, slow as can be, to a corner of the court to retrieve her towel. When she got to her sideline seat, she whacked her racket against her equipment bag, then plopped herself down and smacked the racket against the ground.

Raducanu jogged to the sideline, showered in applause and cheers from the crowd.

Just like the prior afternoon, the Ashe spectators lent their considerable support to a teenager whose name is not yet well-known and who's not yet all that accustomed to gracing these stages.

On Tuesday, a day after turning 19 and sharing cupcakes with Raducanu and others in the locker room, it was Fernandez getting past No. 5 seed Elina Svitolina 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (5) to become the youngest semifinalist at Flushing Meadows since Maria Sharapova in 2005.

On Wednesday, it was the even-younger Raducanu's turn.

Her father is Romanian, her mother is Chinese, and Raducanu was born in Toronto, before the family moved to England when Emma was 2.

Mom and Dad did not make the trip to New York — and they're not exactly in constant contact with their precocious daughter.

"I haven't actually called my parents for quite a while," Raducanu said with a sheepish smile and a roll of her eyes. "Yesterday, like the day before, they were ghosting me."