The top-seeded Yang, who complained of a sore right shoulder after his three-set, two-hour win over Thailand’s Peerakit Siributwong in the round of 16 Thursday, said he felt much better Friday.

His only lapse came late in the second set and early in the third, when the tall American, seen as a rising star in American tennis, won the tiebreaker and took a 2-0 lead in the final set.

“That didn’t have anything to do with the shoulder, “ Yang said. “I just played badly. My forehand wasn’t consistent because I was leaning back too much.”

But the 17-year-old Yang, who appeared to rush as the match seemed to get away from him, quickly regained his composure and imposed a superiority over Williams that had been clearly evident in the first set.

He won six of the final seven games to clinch a berth in the semifinals, where he will face third-seeded Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria.

Yang became the first male Taiwanese player to win a grand slam singles event of any kind when he won the French Open boys singles earlier this year.

Yang and partner Cheng-peng Hsieh, the winners of the boys doubles at this year’s Australian Open and Wimbledon and seeded seventh in New York, lost in the U.S. Open boys doubles quarterfinals Thursday to second seeds and French Open champions Henri Kontinen of Finland and Christopher Rungkat of Indonesia 6-2, 6-4.

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