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FLUSHING MEADOWS, New York – It wasn’t looking good, at first.

Félix Auger-Aliassime’s tempo was off, his ball striking wasn’t crisp. And even though Alex de Minaur couldn’t buy a first serve, he still wasn’t making any inroads.

But after going down a set and a break in the second set, the reality that thi was going to be an infernally long slog set in, and the 25-year-old Canadian decided to embrace it.

In four hours and 10 minutes, he got it done. It wasn’t pretty, but it put Auger-Aliassime into the semifinals of the US Open. .

He first made the last four at a major exactly four years ago in New York. He hadn’t done it since.

Here’s our piece for the Canadian Press.

A few shots from Ashe

Here are a few shots from the match on Arthur Ashe Stadium, which Auger-Aliassime appreciated having already played on when he faced Andrey Rublev. He hadn’t practiced on it all week, and he hadn’t played a match on it in a long time.

Non-stop traffic, and the players just get on with it

It’s enough that there’s this constant hum of conversation on Arthur Ashe Stadium, which is the amalgamation of thousands of different conversations being had while the tennis is happening.

But with the new-ish rules about fans being about to access their seats after every game – not just on changeovers – the chaos is exacerbated.

Because it’s not like people weren’t already leaving whenever they felt the urge.

Sitting in the lower bowl today you saw people who came for the start of the match, lasted two games – and just up and left. And every game more people flooded in for the first set and a half.

They took their time getting seated. They greeted old friends. They did … whatever.

Now, anyone who reads the Open Court Twitter knows that the official take is that people pay a ton of money for good seats at a tennis event. So basically they should be able to do whatever they want, short of throwing projectiles and trolling.

But this is just kind of an obliviousness issue, a lack of courtesy.

For the most part, the players just got on with their business even as folks were standing up in the third row discussing the relative merits of the Honey Deuce vs. the Aperol Spritz.