For the third straight day, the New York sky refused to cooperate. Rain again muscled its way into the schedule at Flushing Meadows, delaying the morning’s play by a couple of hours and leaving players, officials and fans in a familiar holding pattern.
The showers weren’t heavy at first, just enough to smear the blue courts with uncertainty. Players were told to stay put, to wait it out. The radar told a different story. As the clouds thickened and a fresh band of rain rolled across the precinct, the instruction changed: pack up.
On the outside courts, that was that. On the two show courts, the roofs slid shut and the tennis rolled on, Melbourne-style. Everywhere else, the day fractured.
Badosa blitz leaves Kasatkina reeling
Before the latest downpour, Daria Kasatkina had started to find something in the second set, a foothold after a rough opening. Whether the interruption helps or hurts her rhythm is anyone’s guess, but the damage in the first set was already brutal.
“Quick as a flash” is no exaggeration. Kasatkina dropped the opener in just 23 minutes. Paula Badosa broke to love to surge 3-1 ahead, and from there it was one-way traffic.
On Nine’s coverage, Jelena Dokic nailed the tactical battle: Badosa came out swinging at the start of rallies, taking time away, forcing Kasatkina to defend from the first strike. The Russian needed to “weather the storm,” drag points long, lure errors. Instead, she blinked early, spraying mistakes before rallies could stretch into her comfort zone.
The rain pause arrived with Kasatkina looking better in the second set, but with the scoreboard still leaning heavily Badosa’s way and the momentum fragile.
Schoolkate serves his way into the second round
While the weather toyed with the schedule, Tristan Schoolkate made sure nothing else was left to chance.
The Australian blasted his way into the second round with a four-set win over American Nishesh Basavareddy, 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. The numbers behind it were as big as his serve: 25 aces, 82 per cent first serves in, and a razor-thin edge in total points, 121-119.
This wasn’t a procession. Basavareddy actually won more points for long stretches and finished with 119 to Schoolkate’s 121, but when the pressure spiked, the Australian’s serve bailed him out. The tiebreak in the first set, the close of the third, the push in the fourth – every time the match asked a question, Schoolkate answered with pace and precision.
The reward is significant in every sense. A place in the second round and prize money just shy of $266,000. For a player still carving out his place on tour, that’s a serious step forward.
Earlier, as the match unfolded, the numbers told a similar story. Schoolkate’s serve was “on fire,” with 18 aces and an 83 per cent first-serve rate as he led 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-3 and trailed by a game early in the fourth. He was behind 97-93 in total points at that stage, yet ahead where it mattered most: on the scoreboard.
Sweeny’s upset bid ends in retirement drama
On a neighbouring court, Dane Sweeny found himself in the middle of a very different kind of contest – one that ended with more questions than answers.
Sweeny, ranked outside the top 100, was on the verge of a statement win over Corentin Moutet, the Frenchman who climbed as high as No.30 in June and now sits in the 60s. The Australian had surged to a two-sets-to-love lead, 7-6 (4), 6-4, in a match that felt far closer than the score suggested.
Moutet struck five aces to Sweeny’s one and kept clawing at the baseline exchanges, but his first serve misfired badly. Sweeny, by contrast, picked his moments, edging the key games and leading the total points 92-83 at that stage.
The match had already produced a highlight that summed up Sweeny’s day. In one point from the second set, he slipped mid-rally, hit the deck, recovered, and still feathered a delicate drop shot to win the point. It looked like a sign: this might be his day.
Then came the twist.
With Sweeny up 3-0 in the third set, Moutet walked to the net and offered his hand. Retirement. Match over.
The reason wasn’t immediately clear. Moutet had heavy strapping on his forearm and, moments after conceding, buried his face in his towel. There was a tense exchange with the chair umpire; from the fragments audible, it sounded as though he believed he had called for a physio earlier and been refused. Whatever the detail, the result stood: Sweeny through, but not in the fashion he would have imagined.
The context only underlined the scale of the moment. Before the retirement, Sweeny stood on the brink of what would have been a massive upset on paper – a player outside the top 100 outplaying a former top-30 talent on a Grand Slam stage.
Kokkinakis hit by another cruel setback
Not all the Australian stories carried a smile.
Thanasi Kokkinakis, one of the tour’s most popular figures and a perennial crowd favourite, withdrew only hours before his opening match. The 30-year-old has been wrestling with an ankle injury, another blow in a career repeatedly stalled by physical problems.
Earlier this year at the Australian Open it was his shoulder that betrayed him. Now the ankle joins a long, frustrating list.
He had been scheduled to face young star Rafael Jodar in what promised to be a compelling first-round clash. Instead, the match was scratched from the order of play, leaving a hollow gap where a marquee contest should have been.
On a stop-start, rain-soaked morning at Flushing Meadows, the Australians still found ways to leave their mark – some through booming serves, some through grit and opportunism, and one, sadly, through absence. The weather will clear. The question is which of these stories will still be alive when the sun finally takes over the tournament.
