Oh my! The first three days of the 2018 US Open have concluded and with it, most of the first two rounds of play. The tournament started with a bang with World #1 and #1 seed Simona Halep becoming the first top seed to lose first round in the 50 years of the US Open. Halep was my pick to win the whole thing this year, but hard-hitting Estonian Kaia Kanepi knocked her out in straight sets! Other seeded upsets in the early rounds were 2-time major champion Garbine Muguruza, the wily Daria Kasatkina, #9 seed Julia Georges and CoCo Vandeweghe.
On the men's side the wailing was a little quieter with only Top 10 seed to go out was #8 Grigor Dimitrov, who unsurprisingly lost to Stan Wawrinka for the second consecutive first round in a slam. Other male players who lost early are Stefanos Tsitsipas, Kyle Edmund, Jack Sock and Roberto Bautista Agut.
In the first rounds to watch, Caroline Wozniacki got past 2011 champion Sam Stosur and amaria Sharapova ended Patty Schnyder's dream run to a main slam draw at nearly 40 years old. On the men's side the young Canadian Clash between Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime took on a scary turn when 18-year-old Felix was forced to retire due to a racing heartbeat despite splitting the first two sets and competing well in the 3rd.
The marquee event is now going to be the thirtieth matchup between Venus and Serena Williams. I didn't expect this matchup to happen in this tournament and I doubt anyone expected that the two sisters would play 30 matches against each other when they both became professionals well over 20 years ago. Serena leads the head to head 17-12 overall and 9-5 in grand slams. They have only met this early in a major tournament once before, in their first meeting in Australia in 1998. It should be a good match, but I'll pick Serena to get through, even though Venus won their last meeting in Indian Wells earlier this year. They are both playing better than I expected. I didn't really think Venus would get through her first round match with Sveta Kuznetsova or her 2nd round match with Camila Giorgi. as for Serena, after reaching the Wimbledon final her summer hard court prep has been horrific.
Sadly, I don't arrive in New York until tomorrow, so I will only be able to see one of them play on Sunday.
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