Canadian teen rolls on at U.S. open
NEW YORK — Canada’s Denis Shapovalov advanced into the third round of the U.S. Open on Wednesday night after a 6-4, 6-4, 7-6 (3) victory over eighth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France.
The 18-year-old from Richmond Hill, Ont., will next face Kyle Edmund of Britain.
Shapovalov, ranked No. 69 in the world, started the match strong at Arthur Ashe Stadium by breaking Tsonga’s serve on the first game of the opening set. Both players held serve for the rest of the set.
The Canadian had a big break in the second set went Tsonga double faulted to let Shapovalov go up 4-3. He used that momentum to hold on and take a 2-0 set lead.
Shapovalov once again broke Tsonga to put him up 4-3 in the third set, but the Frenchman got it back when Shapovalov was serving for the match to tie the set at 5-5.
The third set went to a tiebreak that Shapovalov dominated to win the match in just over two hours 11 minutes.
Shapovalov, who finished the match with 28 winners, gained entry into the main draw of the final Grand Slam tournament of the season last week with three victories in qualifying.
It’s been a great run of late for Shapovalov, who became the youngest man to reach a Masters semifinal earlier this month at the Rogers Cup in Montreal. That tournament included an upset victory over world No. 1 Rafael Nadal.
Shapovalov defeated Russia’s Daniil Medvedev 7-5, 6-1, 6-2 in the first round of the U.S. Open.
When Shapovalov and Edmund faced each other in the Davis Cup in February, Shapovalov was defaulted and fined $7,000 for hitting a ball in anger that struck the chair umpire in the face and broke a bone under his left eye. But the Canadian rebounded in July, defeating Edmund at the Queen’s Club Championships.
Edmund defeated Steve Johnson 7-5, 6-2, 7-6 (4) earlier Wednesday.
It was an otherwise tough day for Canadians at the U.S. Open with both Eugenie Bouchard and Vasek Pospisil eliminated.
Bouchard of Westmount, Que., fell 7-6 (2), 6-1 to Russia’s Evgeniya Rodina.
Facing double match point, Bouchard sent a backhand into the net as her record dropped to 12-17 on the season.
Bouchard, ranked 76th in the world, has failed to make it past the second round of her last eight tournaments, starting with a second-round exit at the French Open.
The 23-year-old Bouchard made 46 unforced errors, compared to 18 for Rodina.
Bouchard converted three of her four break point opportunities, but struggled to hold serve. Rodina broke Bouchard five times on nine chances.
Rodina, ranked 89th in the world, next faces fourth seed Elina Svitolina of Ukraine.
In men’s action, Vancouver’s Pospisil retired from his match with Spain’s Fernando Verdasco after losing the first set 6-2.
Pospisil, who has been bothered by back pain and struggled through the opening set, met briefly with trainers during the changeover before withdrawing.
Elsewhere, no one, not even Maria Sharapova herself, knew quite what to expect from her return to Grand Slam tennis at the U.S. Open.
It had been 19 months since she had entered a major tournament. She played only nine times anywhere since a 15-month doping suspension ended in April. Two three-set tussles into her stay at Flushing Meadows, it’s clear that Sharapova’s game might be patchy, but she is as capable as ever of coming up with big strokes in big moments — and maybe, just maybe, could stick around for a while in a depleted draw.
Sharapova became the first woman into the third round at the U.S. Open by using 12 aces to help set aside a poor start and coming back to beat Timea Babos of Hungary 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-1 on Wednesday in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
“Look, I certainly have expectations, just because I know I’ve been in these stages before and I’ve been able to execute. There’s a certain level of ‘I know I can do this. I’ve done it before. I want to have that feeling again,’ ” Sharapova said.