Daniil Medvedev walked back into Arthur Ashe Stadium with a score to settle and left with barely a scratch.
Twelve months after a shock first-round exit, the 2021 US Open champion dismantled France’s Hugo Gaston 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 on Sunday, stripping all drama from a match that had threatened, on paper at least, to be awkward. It never was.
Medvedev, cast so often as the gleeful villain in New York, embraced the role again, but this time with cold efficiency rather than chaos. He cracked 34 winners to Gaston’s 11, attacked second serves, and hunted down drop shots as if they were personal insults.
“You need to play your game — I knew he was going to do some drop shots, some underarm serves,” Medvedev said. “I needed to make some winners, put some pressure on him.”
He did exactly that.
Gaston tried the full repertoire: angles, disguise, cute changes of pace. None of it unsettled the six-foot-six Russian. The first crack came in the seventh game of the opening set, when the Frenchman floated a backhand wide to surrender the break. Medvedev didn’t blink again, serving out the set with the air of a man determined not to revisit last year’s nightmare.
The pressure only mounted from there. Early in the second set, Gaston slapped a forehand into the net to gift another break in the third game. Medvedev tightened the screws, his depth and weight of shot pinning the Frenchman behind the baseline.
On break point in the seventh game, Medvedev produced the shot of the match: a leaping backhand, lasered cross-court and well beyond Gaston’s reach. It was the kind of point that underlined the gulf between a former champion and a talented shotmaker struggling to live with the tempo.
All this, just days after Medvedev had publicly toyed with the idea of a future in pickleball following an opening-match defeat in Winston-Salem. If that sounded like a man drifting, his performance in New York suggested the opposite.
He struck first again in the third set, ripping a forehand winner past Gaston to convert a break point in the opening game. From there, he managed the scoreboard with clinical calm, mixing heavy serving with flat, skidding groundstrokes that never allowed Gaston to fully commit to his tricks.
Medvedev finished the job with an unreturnable serve, a fitting full stop to a performance built on control and intent. He now awaits the winner of the clash between American wildcard Sebastian Gorzny and Belgian Raphael Collignon, with the sense that the Ashe court he once owned might be bending back toward him.
Cilic and Ruud withdrawals reshape men’s draw
While Medvedev was restoring order on Ashe, the men’s draw lost two of its more familiar names.
Former champion Marin Cilic and 2022 runner-up Casper Ruud both pulled out of the tournament on Sunday due to injury, stripping the field of two players with proven Flushing Meadows pedigree.
Cilic, who claimed his lone major title in New York 12 years ago, withdrew at 37 with organisers declining to specify the nature of his injury. His place goes to lucky loser Otto Virtanen, who now faces 23rd seed Andrey Rublev in the opening round.
Virtanen himself had abandoned his third-round qualifying match against Grigor Dimitrov with an injury, yet finds a way into the main draw on one of the sport’s biggest stages.
Cilic joins an expanding casualty list that already includes Jannik Sinner, Jack Draper, Joao Fonseca and Holger Rune, a roll call that has quietly reshaped the complexion of the fortnight.
Ruud’s absence lands an even heavier blow. The Norwegian, who pushed Carlos Alcaraz in a gripping final four years ago, has been battling a back problem since retiring during his Cincinnati Open match against Christopher O’Connell earlier this month.
“Unfortunately, my back hasn't healed as quickly as we had hoped,” Ruud said on Instagram. He added that his team had been optimistic but ultimately chose the long-term view, describing himself as “very sad” to miss the US Open singles and vowing to return stronger.
Ruud did appear last week in the revamped mixed doubles event, partnering Diana Shnaider before the pair fell in the quarterfinals to Andrey Rublev and Mirra Andreeva. The singles load, though, was a step too far. Lucky loser Arthur Gea steps into Ruud’s vacated slot and will open against Juan Manuel Cerundolo.
Pegula rides out nerves, keeps No. 1 dream alive
On the women’s side, Jessica Pegula started her campaign with the weight of possibility squarely on her shoulders and a racket arm that, by her own admission, felt tight in the early going.
Leading off the day session on Arthur Ashe, the world No. 3 needed time to settle before dispatching Elena-Gabriela Ruse 6-3, 6-2 in 83 minutes.
Pegula missed her first nine break-point chances, a statistic that might have rattled a less seasoned player. Once she found her rhythm, the match flipped. Her serve became a weapon — she won 92% of points behind her first delivery — and the rallies turned one-way.
“I was so nervous,” Pegula said, admitting she had been sending GIFs of people “freaking out and stuff” before stepping on court. “The first round of a slam, there's always a ton of nerves.”
This time, there is more at stake than survival.
Pegula leads the women’s tour with 46 wins this season. She owns two titles, has reached three additional finals, and arrives in New York on the back of a run to the Cincinnati Open final, where she lost to Coco Gauff.
If she claims her first major title here and No. 2 Elena Rybakina falls before the semifinals, Pegula will rise to world No. 1. That possibility hangs over every service game, every tight deuce, every early-round test.
On day one, she passed the first of them. Now the question is whether she can keep her nerve as the stakes climb and the city that crowned her compatriot Gauff last year asks whether another American is ready to take the final step.
