Dane Sweeny Stuns Lorenzo Musetti at US Open

Dane Sweeny, all 5ft 5in of him, just tore up the script in New York.

The diminutive Australian wildcard produced the win of his life at the US Open, dismantling 14th seed Lorenzo Musetti 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 in a second-round stunner that felt every bit like a modern David slinging stones at a very polished Goliath.

On paper, this was a mismatch. Musetti, a dual grand slam semi-finalist at Wimbledon and Roland Garros over the past two years, arrived as one of the tournament’s dark horses. Sweeny, ranked more than 100 spots below the Italian and lugging a massive ice pack on his right elbow after his opening win, arrived with a wildcard and a dream.

By the end, only one of them looked like a top-20 player. And it wasn’t the Italian.

Sweeny runs Musetti into the ground

Musetti started like a man in control. He took the first set 6-3, leaning on his variety and easy power, and for a brief spell this looked like a routine afternoon for a seeded player easing through the early rounds.

Then the match flipped.

Sweeny tightened his game, sharpened his returns and began to drag Musetti into rallies he didn’t want to play. The Australian’s court coverage and willingness to attack the net turned the contest into a street fight, and Musetti couldn’t live with the pace or the persistence.

The second set raced away 6-1. The third went the same way, 6-2, but the scoreboard didn’t fully capture the Italian’s unraveling. Broken twice to fall behind 0-3 in that crucial set, Musetti called for a medical time-out and looked in real distress as he sat in his chair, shoulders slumped, eyes searching his box for answers that never came.

Even after clawing one break back, his frustration boiled over. He remonstrated animatedly with his team, shaking his head, gesturing, trying to spark something. Across the net, Sweeny just kept coming.

Ice pack or not, the 25-year-old threw himself around the court, diving like Boris Becker for acrobatic volleys and refusing to give an inch. He ran, retrieved, counter-punched, then stepped in to finish at the net with fearless intent. Musetti, so often the artist, was reduced to a spectator in his own match.

The pressure finally broke him. Sweeny closed out the fourth set 6-2 with the authority of a man who knew he belonged, sealing a place in the last 32 of a grand slam for the first time and locking in a minimum payday of $US290,000.

“I’m just grateful to be even able to compete in grand slams. The tennis journey is such a rollercoaster,” Sweeny said. “And to soak up the atmosphere and get a win, a couple of wins, in front of this crowd, is awesome.”

His reward is a third-round clash on Saturday (AEST) with another Italian, world No 22 Luciano Darderi, and a surge towards a career-high ranking of at least No 115. A week ago, that felt distant. Now, it feels like a floor rather than a ceiling.

Schoolkate’s run halted in the heat

For a while, it looked like Sweeny might have company in the third round.

Tristan Schoolkate, who has ridden the qualifying gauntlet just to reach the main draw, snatched the opening set from French Open runner-up Flavio Cobolli and threatened to extend his own fairytale in the New York heat.

Cobolli, the fifth seed, had other ideas.

After dropping the first set 3-6, the Italian steadied, found his range and slowly squeezed the life out of the contest. His class began to show as he raised his first-serve percentage and cut down the errors, grinding out a 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 finish over two hours and 41 minutes.

Schoolkate kept swinging, kept chasing, and refused to go quietly, but in the suffocating summer conditions the gap in experience at this level told. The Australian’s inspired run ended, but not before he’d left a mark on the draw and a few seeds shifting uneasily in their seats.

Popyrin edged out in tiebreak tension

On another court, Alexei Popyrin flirted with another big US Open scalp.

Two years after stunning Novak Djokovic in the third round, the powerful Australian again burst out of the blocks, overpowering Chile’s Alejandro Tabilo 6-2 in the opening set and threatening to muscle his way into the last 32 once more.

Then came the knife-edge moments.

Tabilo, the 25th seed, hung on in the second and third sets, absorbing Popyrin’s pace and forcing the Australian to play one extra ball, one extra shot, one extra risky forehand. Both sets reached tiebreaks. Both times, the Chilean held his nerve.

He took the second set tiebreak 7-4, then the third 7-3, each time prising open the slightest crack in Popyrin’s game and driving through it. When the fourth set began to slip, Popyrin’s resistance finally gave way. Tabilo closed it out 6-2, booking a likely third-round showdown with top seed Alexander Zverev and leaving Popyrin to wonder how close he’d come to another deep New York run.

A new Australian storyline in New York

By the time the dust settled, Australia’s day in New York had turned into a mixed bag: Schoolkate out, Popyrin out, Alex de Minaur still to come on The Grandstand against Botic van de Zandschulp.

Yet the story belonged to Sweeny.

A wildcard, a taped-up elbow, a top-15 opponent and a stadium that didn’t quite know his name at the start of the afternoon. By the end, they did.

He walked off with the biggest win of his career, a place in the last 32, and a shot at rewriting what he thought was possible this season. Now the question is no longer whether he belongs at this level.

It’s how far this unlikely New York run can carry him.