Upset fever has definitively jumped the gender barrier in this predict-at-your-peril United States Open. The men’s draw is not yet as open as the women’s midway through the second week, but big gaps are now visible where the Andys used to dwell.

The Wimbledon finalist Andy Roddick went out with a fight in the third round on Saturday against John Isner. But the bigger surprise came on Tuesday, when the No 2 seed Andy Murray went out much more meekly in the fourth round against Marin Cilic, Croatia’s latest tennis sensation. Spraying ground strokes and misreading returns, Murray bore little resemblance to the steady, self-assured counterpuncher who has thrived on North American hardcourts this year and displaced Rafael Nadal as the world’s No 2 player.

Instead, 16th-seeded Cilic was the young man swooping impressively about the blue surface in Arthur Ashe Stadium, fighting off two set points at 4-5 in the opening set, then rolling to a strangely straightforward 7-5 6-2 6-2 upset in 2 hours, 8 minutes.

“I don’t think I’m perfect,” Murray said. “Sometimes when you play badly, you don’t, you just don’t have a way back in.”

“If you look at the way that he struck the ball from the first set to the end of the third set, he started to play a lot, lot better,” he said of the 20-year-old Cilic. “My game wasn’t up to scratch, and, you know, it’s unfortunate. You know, sometimes in individual sports that can happen. That’s the tough thing about it. You don’t have any other players or anyone to sort of hide behind.”

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