Pegula, Medvedev score early wins at US Open, Alcaraz and Sabalenka to pursue title defense

NEW YORK (AP) — At a rainy U.S. Open where it's a struggle to even finish the first round, Jessica Pegula was happy to quickly be into the third.

The No. 3 seed needed only 56 minutes on Wednesday to defeat Sofia Kenin 6-3, 6-1. Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion, beat Venus Williams in her first match .

“To be out of there in under an hour, it doesn’t always happen,” Pegula said. “So I think I’m just going to take that one and run, I guess, until the next round.”

Some players won't get there for a while. With rain coming down again in New York, play was suspended again on outside courts, allowing play under the roofs in Arthur Ashe Stadium and Louis Armstrong Stadium to continue uninterrupted.

No. 8 seed Ben Shelton followed Pegula on Ashe and beat Hubert Hurkacz 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (3), 7-5, while No. 7 Daniil Medvedev raced past Sebastian Gorzny — except for a brief delay to protest the chair umpire's decision to replay a point when two birds sat on the net — 6-3, 6-3, 7-5.

Defending champions Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz were set to play on Ashe at night.

Those are second-round matches, while some players were still playing their first. When the U.S. Open switched to a Sunday start last year, it spread out the first round over the first three days, so Wednesday would have arrived with everyone playing in the second round had the weather cooperated.

It hadn't, and some players were not only still playing their first match, but they had to hope the weather cleared enough later so they wouldn't have to resume it Thursday.

That poses a mental challenge, with Paula Badosa saying she didn't even know how to prepare for the resumption of her match against Daria Kasatkina, which was halted Tuesday with her one game from winning to set up a second-round match against No. 4 Coco Gauff.

“I didn’t know if I was going to play just two points or six, or I don’t know how much, how many I play or one more set,” the Spaniard said Wednesday before finishing off her 6-1, 6-4 win.

“So I knew that if I was winning this match, I’m playing the next day. So, yeah, it was everything a bit different. I was very nervous that I even couldn’t eat, so a lot of different stuff I did today, but sometimes it is how it is, and I tried to play with the things I had there.”

At least she got through. No. 12 Rafael Jodar, the 19-year-old from Spain who came in after a strong summer, was routed 6-2, 6-1, 6-1 by Bu Yunchaokete of China when his first-round match was finally completed.

The tournament was trying to catch up from Tuesday’s rain delays, with 25 singles matches being played on the men’s side alone.

Alex Michelsen pulled off an upset in one of them by ousting fellow American Brandon Nakashima, the No. 16 seed, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.

No. 7 Karolina Muchova, the Wimbledon runner-up, beat Katie Boulter 6-1, 6-0 to reach the third round, while No. 11 Marta Kostyuk got past 2017 U.S. Open champion Sloane Stephens 6-1, 7-5.

See AP’s full tennis coverage here