Prior to Wimbledon, Norrie had never made it past the third round at a Major tournament in 18 main draw appearances.

By defeating Rune 7-5, 6-4, 6-1 to make the fourth round in New York, the Brit has now recorded consecutive Slam campaigns of reaching the fourth round or further, having made it to the semi-finals at SW19 before falling to eventual champion Novak Djokovic.

As such, in the past the third round may have been a tough stage to be at for Norrie, but he felt very confident ahead of his battle with Rune.

“Ticking that box to make the second week for the first time, that was huge for me,” he explained. “It was a big goal of mine to play well at Slams and play deep in Slams, and to have these matchups.

“I think it does help, you know, going into the tournament, being ranked where I am, being seeded where I am. Obviously Wimbledon, I didn’t get the points there, so maybe I could have been a higher seed anyway.

“Coming into these matches, I don’t think I played great against my first couple rounds. I was able to feel a lot more relaxed today and kind of use that momentum from those matches where I didn’t really play great to playing a lot better today.”

Norrie is grateful to have such a high seeding of seventh in the men’s draw, a position he has really worked for in 2022.

“I think it’s great with the seeding,” he said. “You can work your way more into the tournament rather than going out there, having to play a top seed early on. So it was a good match today, and I was happier with how I performed. I’vesurpris still got a lot of things I would like to improve, and I got tomorrow to do that.”

Norrie may have to as he takes on ninth seed Andrey Rublev next for a place in the quarter-finals, a man with whom he shares a 1-1 win-loss record.