NEW YORK, Sept 5, (AFP): Defending champion Rafael Nadal shocked the US Open on Sunday when he collapsed with cramps during a bizarre news conference while Andy Murray stayed on course for a semi-final clash against the Spaniard. Nadal, 25, was talking to journalists two hours after his third round win over close friend David Nalbandian, when he grimaced in pain, screwed up his eyes and slumped in the back of his chair, feeling his right leg. The world number two, a winner of 10 Grand Slam titles, slipped to the floor behind the table where he had been sitting, and out of view of the media, while tournament medical staff were summoned. Scores of reporters and camera crews were ushered out of the interview room deep inside the Arthur Ashe Stadium, but the drama was still relayed into the nearby media centre by the internal television feed.

The conference room lights were switched off before the top of Nadal’s right leg was suddenly silhouetted above the desk as the physios got to work. After 15 minutes of treatment, Nadal was back on his feet, insisting that the problem was merely cramping. “It was just cramping in the right leg, in the front and in the back. It was very painful, that’s all,” said Nadal, who resumed his news conference standing instead of sitting. A smiling Nadal said the incident will not affect his preparations for his fourth round match against Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller, scheduled for Tuesday. “I will train normally on Monday. It was just a normal cramp that could have happened anywhere, but it’s just bad luck that it happened in the press room. Anywhere else, nobody would have noticed.”

During his 7-6 (7/5), 6-1, 7-5 win over Nalbandian, played out over 2hr 39mins in heavy, 84 degree-heat (29 degrees centigrade), Nadal also needed treatment on his blistered right foot.
Muller, who reached the last 16 by beating Russia’s Igor Kunitsyn 6-1, 6-4, 6-4, famously defeated Nadal at Wimbledon in 2005 before the Spaniard got his All England Club revenge this year.
British fourth seed Andy Murray, the 2008 runner-up, took his career record against Spanish left-hander Feliciano Lopez to six wins in six meetings thanks to an impressive 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 victory.
Murray, who had to come back from two sets down to defeat Dutchman Robin Haase in the second round, didn’t concede a point on his own serve in a brutal first set on Sunday which set the tone for the one-sided tie.
He now faces American wildcard Donald Young, the former world junior number one, who reached the fourth round at a Grand Slam for the first time with a 7-5, 6-4, 6-3 win over Argentine 24th seed Juan Ignacio Chela.

Murray lost to Young in their only previous meeting at Indian Wells this year, and he is desperate to put the record straight.
“I was in a bad place then, it was a tough part of the year,” said Murray. “It’s not that I want revenge on Donald, it’s more about revenge on the situation and to make sure I can move on from that.”
Argentine 18th seed Juan Martin del Potro, the 2009 champion, who missed last year’s title defence because of a serious wrist injury, saw his hopes dashed by Gilles Simon in a four-hour marathon.
The French 12th seed booked his place in the last 16 for the first time with a 4-6, 7-6 (7/5), 6-2, 7-6 (7/3) win over del Potro who committed 72 unforced errors and squandered three set points in the 10th game of the fourth set.
Simon will face 28th seed John Isner who defeated fellow American Alex Bogomolov 7-6 (11/9), 6-4, 6-4.
Spanish fifth seed David Ferrer, a semi-finalist in 2007, beat German 26th seed Florian Mayer 6-1, 6-2, 7-6 (7/2) and next tackles 2003 winner Andy Roddick.
The American 21st seed breezed past French wildcard Julien Benneteau 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) and then laughed off the incident involving Nadal.
“When you go to bed and your foot cramps, it’s the same thing but your entire leg,” said Roddick, who said he wasn’t surprised that Nadal had ended on the floor.
“That’s just a matter of what part of your body cramps. Cramp in your ass, you can’t sit on it anymore. Makes it tough.”

In the women’s draw Samantha Stosur dropped an epic second-set tiebreaker but recovered to beat Maria Kirilenko 6-2, 6-7 (15/17), 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals of the US Open.
Russia’s Kirilenko prevailed in what the WTA said was the longest women’s singles tiebreaker at a Grand Slam tournament to knot the fourth-round match at a set apiece.
But it was the ninth seed from Australia who moved on to a quarter-final clash with second-seeded Russian Vera Zvonareva.
Zvonareva advanced with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Sabine Lisicki, the big-serving German who had hoped to improve on her run to the Wimbledon semi-finals.
Instead Zvonareva, runner-up to Kim Clijsters here last year, needed just 77 minutes to wrap up her fourth career victory over Lisicki in as many meetings.
Stosur has won the last seven of her meetings with Zvonareva, but said she’d take nothing for granted.
“Now we’re playing in a Grand Slam,” Stosur said. “I’m sure she wants to get one back. Obviously it’s a big moment for both of us in the quarters.”

Stosur had already entered the record books this week when she toiled for three hours and 16 minutes to get past Nadia Petrova 7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (5/7), 7-5 in the third round — the longest women’s singles match recorded at the US Open since the tiebreak era began in 1970.
Last year, Stosur saved four match points to win the latest-finishing women’s match in US Open history in her fourth-round defeat of Russian Elena Dementieva.
Stosur said she didn’t expect the long hours she’d been putting in to affect her against Zvonareva.
“I actually feel better after this match than what I did the last match,” the 2010 French Open finalist said. “Who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow morning, but so far, so good.”
Stosur, who had dominated in the opening set, said that once the tiebreaker was behind her she “didn’t find it too difficult to stay mentally strong.
“I knew if I was going to have a chance to win the match, I had to do that.”

Italy’s Flavia Pennetta also stayed tough in the face of adversity as she carved out a 6-4, 7-6 (8/6) victory over a fighting Peng Shuai to set up a quarter-final meeting with German Angelique Kerber — a 6-4, 6-3 winner over Monica Niculescu in a battle of unseeded players.
Pennetta, the 26th seed, who shocked third-seeded Maria Sharapova in the third round, had to fight to the finish against Peng, who saved one match point and gave herself four set points in the tiebreaker before Pennetta was able to reach the quarter-finals for the third time in four years.
Pennetta twice came back from service breaks in the second set, but after breaking Peng for a 6-5 lead she was clearly feeling the strain of the long rallies on the steamy Louis Armstrong Stadium.
Serving for the match, she had to pause at the back of the court as she felt herself becoming ill, returning to the baseline to cheers of encouragement of the crowd — and a time warning from the chair umpire.

“I was feeling really bad,” Pennetta said. “I think it was because it’s really humid. And also, when you are there you have a lot of emotion. My body just needed to breathe, and I started to have the sensation of throwing up. With nothing inside, nothing came out.” When Pennetta failed to convert a match point at 40-30, Peng pounced to seize the game and a quick 5-0 tiebreak lead. Trailing 2-6 in the decider, Pennetta mustered all of her reserves to win six straight points. She saved the fourth set point against her with a forehand cross-court shot that looked headed for the alley but dropped just inside the line. That shot, Peng said, was a morale-breaker. “I also tried to fight,” she said, but by that stage, “I couldn’t really run.”