NEWS US OPEN DAY 7. 1 SEPTEMBER 2014

Match of the Day: Apparently slow and steady really does win the race. On Friday, No. 13 Sara Errani authored the utterly bizarre scoreline of 6-0, 0-6, 7-6 in a victory over Venus Williams. On Sunday, in her 6-3, 2-6, 6-0 win over Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, she just may have topped it. Consider the stats: Errani did not miss a first serve in the first set, miscued on just nine the entire match (a 90 percent success rate) and finished with a mere four winners (yes, you read that right, four winners) and an almost impossible nine unforced errors (also not a typo), while the hyper-aggressive Lucic-Baroni stroked an impressive 46 winners and a mind-bending 69 unforced errors. That means that Lucic-Baroni erred on 82 percent of the points that Errani won. The result: the Italian is into the US Open quarterfinals for the second time in her career, having also achieved the elite eight on her way to the semifinals in 2012.

Player of the Day: This honor was the day’s most difficult to choose. But with all apologies to Belinda Bencic, the 17-year-old who toppled Jelena Jankovic to reach the quarterfinals, and Gael Monfils, who played perhaps the most outstanding tennis of his life in crushing countryman Richard Gasquet, the brightest star on this day did her work under natural light. It had been 30 months and 10 Grand Slams since Caroline Wozniacki had played her way into a major quarterfinal. During that time, the former world No. 1 nearly fell out of the Top 20 and saw her ranking stagnate in the teens. But this summer she started to cobble her game back together, producing incrementally better results and twice putting a scare into Serena Williams during the Emirates Airline US Open Series. On Sunday in Arthur Ashe Stadium, it all came together as she toughed out three-set queen Maria Sharapova to score the upset, 6-4, 2-6, 6-2. With the win, Wozniacki dropped Sharapova’s three-set record on the year to 17-7 and advanced to the quarters here for the first time since 2011, when as the No. 1 seed that year, she reached the semis.

Upset of the Day: For the first time this fortnight, a men’s match fills this slot. Gilles Simon has long had the reputation as a mercurial talent, capable of breathtaking tennis and incomprehensible lapses, often within the same match. The good Simon came out to play on Day 7, out-battling the indefatigable David Ferrer, who shockingly seemed to struggle on a sultry Sunday. With his 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, 6-3 victory, the Frenchman Simon authored the first Top 10 upset in this year’s men’s draw, advancing to the fourth round here for the first time since 2011 and just the second time in eight Opens.