Coco Gauff beat Zeynep Sonmez 6-3, 6-4 and Elena Rybakina dropped five games against Thea Frodin as the leading names came through on a day when rain confined most play to the two roofed stadiums. Yulia Putintseva’s 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 win over 12th seed Belinda Bencic was the only seeded casualty. Twenty women’s matches were scheduled and nine produced results, leaving the first round unfinished.
New York, United States: Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong have roofs. On Tuesday that decided who played.
Showers arrived overnight and stayed, holding every outside court until well past noon and driving play back indoors when the rain returned in the evening. The consequence was a strange, lopsided day: the tournament’s headline acts got on court more or less as scheduled, and a good part of the rest of the draw did not.
Gauff and Rybakina Under the Roof
Gauff opened her bid for a second title here with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Sonmez in the Ashe night session. She is not back on court until Thursday, and does not yet know against whom — her second-round opponent comes from Paula Badosa and Daria Kasatkina, whose match was among those the weather swallowed.
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Rybakina needed 6-3, 6-2 against 17-year-old Thea Frodin. It is worth watching where she goes from here: reaching the semi-finals would take her to world No. 1 regardless of any other result in the draw, while Aryna Sabalenka, Jessica Pegula and Gauff can only get there by winning the title and having Rybakina fall short of the last four.
Mirra Andreeva, the fifth seed, dropped four games in each set against Janice Tjen.
Putintseva Takes the Only Seed
Belinda Bencic took the opening set off Yulia Putintseva and then lost the next two, going down 4-6, 7-5, 6-3. It was the only seeded defeat of the day on the women’s side. Bencic had reached the mixed doubles final here during Fan Week, losing alongside Flavio Cobolli to Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik.
Keys Survives Korneeva
Madison Keys had the closest thing to a scare among the seeds who survived. Her match with 19-year-old Alina Korneeva contained ten breaks of serve, and Keys was broken herself while serving it out at 5-3 in the second.
She got it done in the following game, coming back from 15-40 and finishing when Korneeva put a forehand wide, for a 7-5, 6-4 win. Korneeva had beaten Emma Navarro and Iva Jovic at the Toronto WTA 1000 earlier in the summer, and Keys said afterwards that young players going for their shots are always awkward.
Alexandra Eala, Elise Mertens, Anastasia Potapova and Maria Sakkari also advanced, Sakkari from a set down against Robin Montgomery.
What the Rain Took
Eleven of Tuesday’s twenty scheduled women’s matches produced no confirmed result, among them Kasatkina against Badosa, 14th seed Iva Jovic against Magdalena Frech and 30th seed Jelena Ostapenko against Tatjana Maria.
Forecasters had warned of flash flooding and hail through the night session, and the National Weather Service has flagged further storms later in the week. The first round, which was scheduled to conclude on Tuesday, now runs into a fourth day.
First-round results — US Open, women’s singles, day three
[2] E. Rybakina d. T. Frodin 6-3, 6-2
[4] C. Gauff d. Z. Sonmez 6-3, 6-4
[5] M. Andreeva d. J. Tjen 6-2, 6-2
[17] A. Eala d. M. Stoiana 6-1, 6-2
[22] M. Keys d. A. Korneeva 7-5, 6-4
[23] E. Mertens d. K. Quevedo 6-4, 6-4
[32] M. Sakkari d. R. Montgomery 2-6, 7-5, 6-2
Y. Putintseva d. [12] B. Bencic 4-6, 7-5, 6-3
