Diego Schwartzman Upends Dominic Thiem in French Open - The New York Times

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So shaky when it came time to close out sets against Dominic Thiem, Diego Schwartzman held firm when he needed it most on Tuesday.

His reward, after five hours and eight minutes of grinding rallies and mounting pressure, was the most significant victory of his career and a spot in the French Open semifinals.

Schwartzman’s 7-6 (1), 5-7, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (5), 6-2 victory put him into a Grand Slam singles semifinal for the first time. He will face either Rafael Nadal, the 12-time French Open champion whom Schwartzman defeated in the Italian Open last month, or Jannik Sinner, a 19-year-old newcomer from Italy.

Nadal and Sinner were scheduled to play their quarterfinal later on Tuesday night at Roland Garros.

But Schwartzman-Thiem will be a tough act to follow. It was a classic clay-court match full of long slides and extended rallies: many of which stretched past 20 strokes and left both players fluttering their lips or puffing out their cheeks.

Schwartzman, the No. 12 seed from Argentina, often looked like the fresher man against Thiem, who won his first major title at the United States Open last month. But Thiem, who can scrap for points as well as end them with his thunderous groundstrokes, kept pushing and swinging away.

Schwartzman kept cracking. With Thiem serving at 4-5 in the second set, Schwartzman had a straightforward forehand near the net that he would typically have smacked for a winner to take a 15-40 lead and give himself two set points. Instead, Schwartzman missed into the net and Thiem went on to hold and even the match at one set apiece.

Schwartzman also served for the third set at 5-3 only to be broken at love, making four unforced errors. Thiem went on to save a set point and take a two-set-to-one lead.

“I was so nervous,” Schwartzman said. “I saw a chance today, and I didn’t take it in the second and third sets.”

It looked like he might make the same mistake again when he served for the fourth set at 5-4 and was broken once more. But he smiled through the pain and recovered to win the fourth-set tiebreaker after Thiem was two points from winning the match with a 5-4 lead.

He then broke Thiem’s serve twice in the fifth set to finish off the tennis marathon.

There will be no U.S. Open-French Open double in singles in this unique season. Thiem, a finalist at the French Open the last two years, tried to recover from his breakthrough victory in New York by taking two weeks off before playing at Roland Garros.

But he was pushed to five sets in the fourth round by French wild-card entry Hugo Gaston and was pushed even harder on Sunday by Schwartzman in the cool, heavy conditions that made clean winners a challenge.

“To be honest, I was over the limit today,” said Thiem. “Maybe I would have recovered. Even though I’m physically and mentally on the edge, you never know in a Slam, especially with Wednesday and Thursday off, two full days to recover. You never know what’s happening. But at the end, I gave everything I had out there. It was an amazing match, I think the first in my career over five hours. Diego fully deserves it.”

It was a remarkable day for Argentine tennis. Earlier Tuesday, Nadia Podoroska became the first qualifier to reach the women’s singles semifinals at the French Open in the Open era. Podoroska, a 23-year-old playing for the first time in the main draw at Roland Garros, upset No. 3 seed Elina Svitolina 6-2, 6-4.

It was also Podoroska’s first singles match against a top 20 opponent, but however improbable on paper, the result looked quite logical o as the match unfolded on clay. Podoroska dictated play with her heavy topspin forehand, changed pace effectively with drop shot winners and converted eight of 13 break points on Svitolina’s shaky serve.

“What I improved most, I think, was my mentality,” Podoroska said of her unexpected run at Roland Garros.

It was the latest bravura performance by a new arrival this year, and it guaranteed that there will be an unseeded women’s singles finalist. Podoroska will next face Iga Swiatek, a 19-year-old from Poland, or Martina Trevisan, another qualifier ranked outside the top 100.

Thiem’s and Schwartzman’s lengthy duel on Philippe Chatrier Court pushed the start of Swiatek's and Trevisan’s quarterfinal into the evening with Nadal and Sinner to follow and likely to play well past midnight.

But the backlog was also prompted by the decision to start the day’s schedule on Chatrier with the postponed fourth-round women’s singles match between Danielle Collins of the United States and Ons Jabeur of Tunisia. Collins and Jabeur were unable to start their match on Monday because of rain, which suspended play on the outside courts (Chatrier is the only court with a roof at Roland Garros).

But with more rain in the forecast for Tuesday, French Open organizers chose to put the unseeded Collins and 30th seeded Jabeur on the main court, and Collins ended up winning 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in just under two hours.

Collins, a fiery competitor and two-time N.C.A.A. singles champion at the University of Virginia, was a surprise semifinalist at the 2019 Australian Open and is now a surprise quarterfinalist at another major after falling back in the rankings in the last year. On Wednesday, she will face Sofia Kenin, the American No. 4 seed and highest ranked player remaining in the women’s draw. Kenin won her first Grand Slam singles title earlier this year at the Australian Open.

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