Score one for the big guys: Anderson tallest ever to reach Slam final

There's this weird tension in pro tennis, and specifically pro men's tennis, between two competing notions about tall players.

One is that these players - with their easy power, downward-diving serves and smothering wingspans - represent the future of the sport. The other is that the clumsy, slow-footed movement and compromised durability that typically accompanies their size will prevent them from ever becoming truly dominant.

To this point, the latter theory has largely held, with even abnormally mobile big men like Alexander Zverev - the 6-foot-6 prodigy we've all fallen over ourselves to anoint the Next Big Thing - struggling to do damage in the Grand Slam best-of-five format.

The jury's still out on whether that will change - in Zverev's case, it certainly seems more a question of when than if - but on Friday, Kevin Anderson scored a victory for the bigs. The 6-foot-8 South African beat Pablo Carreno Busta in the US Open semifinals, to become the tallest player ever to reach a Slam final. The previous record was held by both Marin Cilic and Juan Martin del Potro, both 6-foot-6.

Anderson is more mobile and skilled than most other players his size, and he can hang in longer baseline rallies. But he won Friday by playing big-man tennis in its purest form, and playing it to virtual perfection. Against a plucky counterpuncher, he rained down hellfire with his serve, played one-two punch with his forehand, approached early and often, and choked off passing angles with his rangy volleying.

Carreno Busta made hardly any mistakes, which helped him take the first set, but Anderson cranked up the volume and broke him down. Anderson cracked 22 aces, along with an additional four service winners. He won 26 of 36 points (72 percent) at net. He won 78 percent of his service points, a preposterous number in any match, let alone a Grand Slam semifinal. He lost just nine service points in the final two sets combined.

Anderson's path to the final was aided by a historically soft draw - Carreno Busta, the world No. 19, was the highest-ranked player he faced - and he still has another match to play. But on Friday, his height was very much his friend.