CAMERON Norrie’s US Open run ended with a second-round defeat by 12th seed Pablo Carreno Busta.
The 22-year-old had already won four matches on his Flushing Meadows debut having come through qualifying and then defeated Dmitry Tursunov when the Russian retired.
But the greater experience of Spain’s Carreno Busta showed in a 6-2, 6-4, 6-3 victory.
Norrie saw it as a good draw given Carreno Busta is not one of the bigger hitters on tour but he is very solid and a good athlete, and he broke the young British player’s serve straight away.
Norrie allowed himself to become distracted by what he felt were a number of poor calls by the umpire.
He grew stronger as the match went on and, after missing chances in the second set, broke the Carreno Busta serve for the first time at the start of the third.
Norrie could not maintain his advantage, though, and lost six of the last seven games.
Norrie, who was born in Johannesburg and brought up in New Zealand, has a Scottish father and earlier in the week described himself as “pretty Scottish”.
He said: “I was a little bit disappointed with how I started. That court was pretty loud, it was an awkward time of day, the lights were on but it was still light, and I lost a little bit of focus early on.
“He broke me but I felt OK, it was kind of nice to play against him, allow myself to work myself into the match. But he was too good today. I enjoyed it.”
Norrie only turned professional in May after a stellar career in college tennis in the United States but has made swift progress and he will be ranked inside the top 200 when the standings are updated.
He will return to the second tier Challenger Tour after this but believes he is ready to play at the top level all the time.
Norrie said: “I think I’m ready now but I just need to play these matches more. I think I belong here and I can play at this level. I can take a lot of confidence from that and I can compete with these guys.”
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