Tennis: Edmund excited for Flushing Meadows after joining the elite
KYLE EDMUND will head into the US Open buoyed by recognition that he is now seen as one of the leading players in the world.
The 23-year-old will take on Italian Paolo Lorenzi in the first round today as the 16th seed for the year’s final grand slam and looking to hit more highs in a season that has already had plenty of them.
Then next month, the Australian Open semi-finalist will take his place alongside Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in Team Europe at the Laver Cup in Chicago. The Ryder Cup-style event between Team Europe and Team World, the brainchild of Federer and his manager Tony Godsick, had a hugely successful first edition in Prague last year, when Edmund’s name would have been nowhere near the thinking.
The British No 1 said: “It’s very exciting. My team-mates are all top 10, so it shows the high standard you’re going to play. After watching last year, what I really liked was how seriously it was taken and the players were really into it.
“When you’re in your tennis career, you’ve got to enjoy it as much as possible so when you have opportunities to play alongside Novak and Roger, I think you’ve just got to go out there and take it.
“When I got asked, it was a really nice privilege. To put myself in a position to be asked is a really nice thing with how my ranking’s gone up this year.”
Edmund’s immediate focus is Flushing Meadows, where he has a good record having reached the fourth round in 2016 and the third round 12 months ago. He might have gone further but for a neck problem that led him to retire against Denis Shapovalov.
Edmund has not had the best build-up, winning only three matches across four hard-court tournaments, but two of those came last week in Winston-Salem before a heavy loss to Steve Johnson.