NEW YORK — The opening day of the U.S. Open claimed its largest upset sufferer thus far in No. 4 seed Holger Rune.
Spaniard Roberto Carballes Baena, ranked 63rd, downed Rune 6-3, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, on Monday for his first-ever victory over a top-10 participant. Rune, a 20-year-old Dane who cracked the highest 5 after reaching the quarterfinals of the French Open and Wimbledon, had complained earlier than the match about being assigned to one of many outer courts, sarcastically tweeting a map of Flushing Meadows to assist his followers discover it.
“I just didn’t expect to play on that court,” Rune mentioned afterward. “That’s obviously disappointing but not going to blame the court on the loss.”
On the ladies’s aspect, No. 1-ranked defending champion Iga Swiatek wanted simply 58 minutes to beat Swede Rebecca Peterson 6-0, 6-1, Nineteenth-seeded Beatriz Haddad Maia took out 2017 champion Sloane Stephens 6-2, 5-7, 6-4, and fourth-seeded Elena Rybakina, final 12 months’s Wimbledon champion, defeated Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine 6-2, 6-1.
Spaniard Rebeka Masarova upset eighth-seeded Maria Sakkari 6-4, 6-4, with the Greek complaining afterward she was bothered by the odor of marijuana.
“The smell, oh my gosh,” Sakkari mentioned to the chair umpire within the first set. “It was weed.”
Tenth-seeded American Frances Tiafoe, a 25-year-old from Maryland who reached the semifinal eventually 12 months’s U.S. Open, had little hassle in a 6-2, 7-5, 6-1, victory over wild-card countryman Learner Tien.
Dominic Thiem, the 2020 champion who’s unseeded this 12 months, downed Twenty fifth-seeded Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan 6-3, 6-2, 6-4. Thiem, an Austrian who had misplaced his earlier seven Grand Slam matches, subsequent faces American Ben Shelton, who defeated Argentine Pedro Cachin in 4 units.
The longest match thus far, 4 hours and 29 minutes, went to Zhizhen Zhang of China, who outlasted American J.J. Wolf 7-5, 7-5, 6-7 (5), 4-6, 6-3.
Still to come back are matches with Coco Gauff on the ladies’s aspect, and Novak Djokovic on the boys’s.
Gauff, a 19-year-old from Florida, faces Laura Siegemund of Germany, who received the ladies’s doubles title in New York three years in the past. Gauff was the runner-up on the French Open in singles – dropping to Swiatek – and doubles in 2022.
Wrapping issues up in the principle stadium can be 23-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic in opposition to Alexandre Muller of France, who’s making his U.S. Open debut. It marks a return to the occasion for Djokovic, who missed it final 12 months as a result of he couldn’t journey to the United States as a foreigner who isn’t vaccinated in opposition to COVID-19. That rule has been dropped.
The first spherical is performed over Monday and Tuesday. The match lasts two weeks and wraps up with the ladies’s singles last on Sept. 9, and the boys’s singles last on Sept. 10.
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