Murray begins defence strongly
Defending US Open champion Andy Murray raced into the US Open second round with a 6-2, 6-4, 6-3 win over veteran Frenchman Michael Llodra on Wednesday. The third seeded Murray, who snapped Britain’s 76-year wait for a men’s Grand Slam champion when he triumphed in New York last year, needed just 98 minutes to get past the 33-year-old Llodra.
Indian qualifier Somdev Devvarman needed five sets over eight hours between rain delays and a determined foe, but he reached the second round of the US Open on Wednesday with a clutch late performance. The 28-year-old former US college star defeated Slovakia’s Lukas Lacko 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 in three hours and 11 minutes of match time, although rain halted the match for more than four hours after he won the third set. ‘Bummer for me, momentum switch,’ Devvarman said. ‘But you have to pull your pants up and deal with it. Just the nature of the beast.’
Devvarman made 36 unforced errors, fewer than half of Lacko’s 73 such mistakes, and hung tough at the finish ‘When you are playing in the fifth set, a lot of it is you play with adrenaline at that point. I know both of us were dying at the end,’ Devvarman said.
Former champion Juan Martin del Potro outslugged a gritty Guillermo Garcia-Lopez in a contentious four-set match decided by a tiebreaker to reach the second round of the US Open on Wednesday.
Argentine Del Potro, who won his only grand slam at Flushing Meadows in 2009, beat the 74th ranked Spaniard 6-3, 6-7, (5) 6-4, 7-6 by taking the climactic tiebreak 9-7 on his fourth match point. Del Potro will next play 2001 US Open champion Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, who beat American wild card Brian Baker 6-3, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.
As the anointed leader of the next generation of American tennis players, Sloane Stephens is getting used to being in the spotlight. At the US Open on Wednesday, there was she again, under the bright lights of New York but in the most intimidating stadium in world tennis. The 20-year-old had been a bundle of nerves in her first match on Monday at Louis Armstrong Stadium and needed nearly three hours to advance. But on Wednesday, in front of a much bigger audience, she passed her latest test with flying colours, demolishing Poland’s Urszula Radwanska 6-1, 6-1 to ease into the third round. ‘I just had a goal, I was going to come out here and play aggressive, not miss a ball and make her work. That’s all I can do,’ she said in a courtside interview.
China’s Zheng Jie advanced to the third round of the US Open on Wednesday by outlasting seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (7/5) in a victory she called ‘unbelievable.’
Deadlocked 5-5 in the tie-breaker, 60th-ranked Williams sent a backhand volley into the net to give 56th-ranked Zheng her first match point chance. When Williams sent a backhand wide, Zheng jumped for joy in triumph. ‘Today is tough match for me. Unbelievable I can beat her,’ Zheng said.
