Things catch up to John Isner in loss at U.S. Open

Reporting from New York — 

John Isner played from behind Sunday night, getting his wicked serve broken in the very first game of his third-round match against Mikhail Youzhny, a 28-year-old Russian veteran who doesn’t often win the biggest matches but who wins enough.

“It’s tough playing from behind like that,” Isner said. “It takes so much energy to try to come back from a hole like that.”

Energy was mostly missing from the 18th-seeded Isner on Sunday night. He had a moment of mid-match rejuvenation, but it wasn’t enough, and he lost to the 12th-seeded Youzhny, 6-4, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (5), 6-4, in three hours 18 minutes.

It has been a grueling summer for the 25-year-old Isner. He played 11 hours and five minutes in a Wimbledon match he won 70-68 in the fifth set. He lost a final in Atlanta when the temperature on the court registered 150 degrees. He badly sprained an ankle in a tournament two weeks ago.

So only briefly did the pro-Isner fans on Arthur Ashe Stadium get a chance to stand up and cheer.

After consecutive aces, one of them registering 144 mph, had helped Isner hold serve in the 11th game of the second set, the crowd was in a frenzy, beer spilling from the cups while hands clapped. It helped get Isner into a tiebreak he won, but when there was a tiebreak in the third set, Isner had less luck.

Though it was Isner who had the most aces in the match — 33 — it was Youzhny who finished off the third set tiebreak with one.

Isner’s friend and sometimes doubles partner Sam Querrey fared better. The 20th-seeded player, 22 and from Thousand Oaks, beat 14th-seeded Spaniard Nicolas Almagro, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. Afterward, Querrey had a request: that he finally get a chance to play on the big court, Ashe Stadium. “I think I’m ready,” Querrey said.

Querrey’s fourth-round opponent is unexpected. Swiss veteran Stanislaw Wawrinka upset fourth-seeded and 2008 finalist Andy Murray, 6-7 (3), 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-3. Murray, 23, seemed out of sorts from the start.

The windy conditions and his unruly groundstrokes seemed to cause Murray to become disgruntled. Murray was muttering to himself by the end of the nearly four-hour match. “You need to play your best tennis and that’s it. That’s the only way to win a big one, and I didn’t,” Murray said.

The rest of the day went as expected.

Third-seeded Venus Williams overpowered 16th-seeded Shahar Peer of Israel, 7-6 (3), 6-3, and earned her way to a quarterfinal date with French Open champion Francesca Schiavone, who beat young Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 6-3, 6-0. Defending champion and second-seeded Kim Clijsters also went mostly untested, taking less than an hour to eliminate Ana Ivanovic, 6-2, 6-1.

In the quarterfinals, Clijsters will play fifth-seeded Samantha Stosur, who saved four match points and beat 12th-seeded Elena Dementieva, 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (2) in 2:37. The winning point was hit at 1:37 a.m. EDT, the latest ending ever for a women’s match at the U.S. Open.

Top-seeded Rafael Nadal was one of five Spanish men to stay alive in the top half of the draw. Nadal beat Gilles Simon, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.

Stat of the day

Williams topped out her service speed with one at 127 mph. Her fastest second serve was 112, which was also faster than Peer’s fastest serve of 107 mph.

Monday’s featured matches

At 8 a.m. PDT on Arthur Ashe Stadium, 2004 U.S. champion Svetlana Kuznetsova vs. unseeded Dominika Cibulkova; Mardy Fish (19) vs. third-seeded Novak Djokovic, who has been a semifinalist the last two years; 2009 runner-up and top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki against 2006 champion Maria Sharapova (14); at 4 p.m., 38th-ranked Andrea Petkovic of Germany against Wimbledon finalist Vera Zvonareva (7) and 13th-seeded Jurgen Melzer of Austria against second-seeded and five-time champion Roger Federer.

diane.pucin@latimes.com twitter.com/mepucin