QUICK HITS Stephens tops Gauff at Open

NEW YORK — Three years ago, a reporter asked Sloane Stephens to point out a younger tennis player most fans might not have heard of yet, someone she thought could become a household name some day. Stephens responded: Coco Gauff, then 14.

Stephens had first met Gauff several years earlier and knew what she was talking about. The pair of friends met in an official match for the first time Wednesday at the U.S. Open, and it was Stephens, the 2017 champion now ranked 66th, who earned a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Gauff, now 17 and seeded 21st.

With the Ashe roof shut during a downpour, the thumpthump-thump of the rain created a bass beat that drowned out the usual sounds of a tennis match. Only one other court at Flushing Meadows can be covered during bad weather, but even that was an issue Wednesday evening, because wind helped push rain through the space between the concourse and the retractable cover.

So the match between two-time major finalist Kevin Anderson and Diego Schwartzman was delayed for nearly a half-hour at 5-all in the first set while workers used air blowers to dry the playing surface, then stopped again early in the second set when the court got so wet that efforts to clear the puddles were abandoned.

The match to determine the next foe for Stephens — threetime Slam champ Angelique Kerber vs. Anhelina Kalinina — was supposed to be played in Armstrong following AndersonSchwartzman but was postponed until Thursday.

The conditions didn’t matter at all to defending champion Naomi Osaka, who advanced earlier in the day when her secondround opponent, Olga Danilovic, pulled out of the tournament because of what she said was a viral illness.