NEW YORK — Novak Djokovic suffered in sweltering US Open conditions Tuesday but held on to reach the second round with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, 6-0 victory over Hungarian Marton Fucsovics.
The Wimbledon champion, playing his first match on Arthur Ashe Stadium since falling to Stan Wawrinka in the 2016 final, received a brutal welcome back as soaring temperatures and suffocating humidity prompted organizers to offer the men a 10-minute mid-match heat break for the first time ever.
“We both struggled. We were not the only ones today. Brutal conditions,” said Djokovic, who called for trainers who enveloped him in ice packed towels late in the second set.
“I had to find a way to dig myself out of the trouble.”
Until late in the third it was “survival mode” said Djokovic, who endured a rocky start to the season after elbow surgery before breaking through for a 13th Grand Slam title at Wimbledon.
His Cincinnati Masters victory over Roger Federer stamped him a US Open favorite along with defending champion Rafael Nadal, despite his modest sixth seeding.
FEDERER DOMINATES NISHIOKA
Five-time champion Roger Federer eased into the second round of the US Open on Tuesday, beating Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka 6-2, 6-2, 6-4.
The Swiss great, seeded second at Flushing Meadows behind defending champion and world number one Rafael Nadal, improved his perfect record in US Open first-round matches with his 18th win in 18 attempts.
As the opening attraction of the night session on Arthur Ashe Stadium, Federer escaped the worst of hot, humid conditions that punished players earlier in the day.
Nor did he meet much resistance from Nishioka, who was ranked 58th in the world last March before tearing a left knee ligament and sliding out of the top 150.
After rolling through the first two sets with the loss of just four games, Federer cruised to a 4-0 lead in the third. Up 5-1, he was unable to close out the match against Nishioka’s serve, and then was broken on his first attempt to serve it out himself.
Federer, who claimed is 20th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January, would put the match away two games later, finally sealing the win with a service winner.
“I’m very happy to be back in New York healthy,” said Federer, who claimed five straight US Open titles from 2004-2008 but missed the 2016 edition and only made it to the quarter-finals last year.
He next faces France’s Benoit Paire, a 7-6 (8/6), 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7/5) winner over Austrian qualifier Dennis Novak.
Mercurial Australian Nick Kyrgios, the 30th seed, will be in action on Armstrong, taking on Moldova’s Radu Albot with a possible third-round meeting with Federer in the offing.
Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki played in the heat of the day, but the weather oppressing so many seemed to suit the Dane as she defeated 2011 champion Samantha Stosur 6-3, 6-2.
“I just tried to cool down between games, used ice,” said Wozniacki, who also imagined she was on the beach “margarita in hand.”
While Wozniacki got by with the help of eight double faults from Stosur and “trying to think cool thoughts,” for France’s Alize Cornet the steamy conditions were a “nightmare.”
Cornet wept as she sat courtside, telling doctors she felt ill amid her three-set loss to Johanna Larsson of Sweden.
With the women already taking advantage of a WTA recommended “heat break” prior to a third set, organizers decided Tuesday afternoon that the men would be afforded a similar 10-minute off court rest prior to a fourth set under an Extreme Heat Policy.
‘MAGNIFICENT FEELING’
It wasn’t enough to prevent half a dozen retirements, with Italy’s Stefano Travaglia, Argentine Leonardo Mayer, Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis, Russian Mikhail Youzhny, and Serbian Filip Krajinovic all victims of the heat and Romanian Marius Copil succumbing to an arm injury.
“I had heat stroke,” Mayer said of his decision to call it quits. “I was not going to die on the court, tennis is not for that.”
Djokovic called it “sad.”
“There’s so much cramping going on,” he said, noting that while it’s a player’s responsibility to be fit “there are some conditions that are so extreme that as fit as you are you can’t just not feel it.”
Although he appreciated the heat break, he wasn’t sure if organizers should go further and give up on the 25-second serve clock, newly introduced at the US Open to strictly monitor time players take between points.
“When a rule is implemented, it’s kind of hard to just switch the shot clock off just because the conditions are difficult and brutal,” Djokovic said. — AFP

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