A different opening at Flushing Meadows
Twelve months ago Daniil Medvedev walked off in the first round in New York, beaten by Benjamin Bonzi. Another Frenchman stood across the net today. Nothing went wrong this time.
The 2021 champion beat qualifier Hugo Gaston 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 on Arthur Ashe Stadium, closing it out in 2 hours 16 minutes. He did not drop serve once.
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The serve did the work
Ten aces. Eighty-three percent of points won behind the first delivery. Thirty-four winners. Gaston, ranked 91st and through qualifying, found no way into the match once the opening set slipped away, and the Russian controlled the tempo from the back of the court for the rest of the afternoon.
That matters more than the scoreline suggests, because Medvedev arrived in New York off a preparation nobody would call reassuring. Brandon Nakashima saved match points to beat him in the Cincinnati third round. At Winston-Salem last week he was gone in 82 minutes, out in his opening match.
A first round against a qualifier with Gaston’s touch could have turned into another of those days. It did not.
Into a wide-open draw
Medvedev is seeded seventh here and sits eighth in the world at 3,580 points. For a place in the third round he meets the winner of Raphael Collignon against American wild card Sebastian Gorzny.
The bracket around him is unusually loose. Sixteen of the last 17 Grand Slam titles have gone to Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic or Jannik Sinner, and the summer hardcourt swing left the men’s field looking readable rather than settled.
New York remains the venue that suits him best. The hard courts here gave him his only major title, and the pattern he built that fortnight in 2021 still describes his tennis: deep return position, long rallies, opponents talked out of their own game. Whether that holds up across seven matches is the question the next two weeks answer.
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