It will be a matchup of Grand Slam champions on Friday — two women capable of going on a deep run at the U.S. Open after nearly losing their first match.
Angelique Kerber, the 16th seed who has won three majors, cruised into the third round with a 6-3 6-2 victory Thursday over Anhelina Kalinina, and into a showdown against unseeded American Sloane Stephens at Louis Armstrong Stadium.
���I know what to expect against Sloane. We played so many matches,” Kerber said. “She’s always a tricky opponent. She can play everything. I know that here, especially here, she is always playing her best tennis.”
Like Kerber, the 28-year-old Stephens didn’t have much trouble in the second round, taking out close friend and 21st-seed Coco Gauff in straight sets. And like Kerber, Stephens survived a first-round thriller, needing to rally past fellow American Madison Keys in three sets. The winner would likely get third-seeded Naomi Osaka in the fourth round.
“I have to be ready from the first point. I think that I have to play like today, being aggressive, focusing on my game,” Kerber, the 2016 US Open champion who reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in July, said. “I’m really looking forward [to it] and I’m excited to play against her again.”
Kerber was supposed to play her second-round match Wednesday night, but it got moved to Thursday when heavy winds pushed rain through the empty space between the concourse level and the retractable cover at Louis Armstrong Stadium. She will now have to play on consecutive days, while Stephens had a one-day break between her matches.
Young American Amanda Ansimova held match point in a third-set tiebreaker against Karolina Pliskova, but couldn’t pull off the upset in a thriller at Ashe Stadium. The fourth-seeded Czech won three straight points and the match, 7-5, 6-7 (5), 7-6 (7).
Pliskova, a 2016 Open finalist, won the first set before needing to hang on by a thread. She is considered the tour’s best player never to win a Grand Slam event. The 20-year-old Ansimova, who has received plenty of hype as the next great American women’s hope, is ranked 75th.
The U.S. Open is making it up to fans impacted by the nasty weather. Ticket-holders from the Wednesday night sessions at Louis Armstrong Stadium have three options. They can get a refund, receive tickets to a comparable session next year or work with the ticket office to attend another night at this year’s tournament.
Additionally, fans with tickets to Thursday’s day session who were not able to make it due to the impact of the storm can exchange those tickets for a session later in the tournament depending on availability.
Ticket-holders should email USOpenTicketOffice@usta.com or call 1.833.2US.Open.
Maxime Cressy, the American qualifier who pulled a mammoth upset in the first round by ousting ninth-seeded Pablo Carreño Busta, didn’t have any magic left Thursday. He fell to Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili, 7-6 (3), 6-3, 7-5 in straight sets.
— additional reporting by Marc Berman