Australia women\u2019s No 1 Daria Kasatkina has overcome a shaky start to ease into the second round while late bloomers Priscilla Hon and Adam Walton are savouring breakout wins on day two at the US Open.<\/p>\n
Kasatkina took time to get going before outclassing Romanian Elena-Gabriela Ruse 7-5 6-1 to set up a second-round meeting with former Russian compatriot Kamilla Rakhimova.<\/p>\n
The 15th seed dropped her first two service games of the first set and was broken once more by Ruse before holding on for a one-set lead.<\/p>\n
But Kasatkina, who changed allegiances from Russia to Australia in March<\/a>, found her feet in the second set to defeat Ruse in an hour and 18 minutes on Monday (Tuesday AEST).<\/p>\n \u201cI have to be honest, I could do better,\u201d Kasatkina said. \u201cWe\u2019re tennis players but we also have stuff going on outside the tennis court. There\u2019s always something going on in your life.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the time if you bring it on court then you have to fight those things in your head. I\u2019ve had a lot of changes in the past year, which was not easy to manage. I hope it\u2019s going to be a bit calmer.\u201d<\/p>\n Six years after debuting at Flushing Meadows and on her third attempt, Hon finally broke through with a 6-3 7-5 victory over Frenchwoman Leolia Jeanjean.<\/p>\n The 27-year-old qualifier was left overjoyed.<\/p>\n Priscilla Hon serves against Leolia Jeanjean in the first round at the 2025 US Open. Photograph: Maddie Meyer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s my favourite slam apart from the Australian Open so, yeah, can\u2019t be much happier right now,\u201d Hon said. \u201cI love New York, everything about it.<\/p>\n \u201cLike the fans, everyone that comes to watch, there\u2019s so much energy and it\u2019s so chaotic and there\u2019s so much happening.<\/p>\n Hon will hit a new career-high after the tournament but isn\u2019t done yet, vowing to go out swinging against Russian 17th seed Liudmila Samsonova.<\/p>\n Fellow Brisbane battler Walton also sent a more-fancied French opponent packing, taking down 22nd seed Ugo Humbert 6-4 7-6 (7-4) 5-7 6-1 for the biggest win of his career.<\/p>\n Walton\u2019s victory follows a titanic win over former world No 1 and 2021 US Open champion Daniil Medvedev in Cincinnati and will send the 26-year-old to a career-high of at least No 74 in the world.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Australia Sport<\/p>\n Get a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports desk<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had a great American summer,\u201d Walton said. \u201cI feel more comfortable being back on the hard courts, and I\u2019m just glad that this American summer I\u2019ve really been able to capitalise on some good matches and some good wins.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year was was horrible. I didn\u2019t win a match. But I\u2019m just feeling very happy with where my game\u2019s at right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Hon and Walton can look forward to the biggest pay days yet, a minimum $US154,000 ($A237,000).<\/p>\n Walton has a huge opportunity to go even deeper in the draw when he faces Hong Kong qualifier Coleman Wong, the world No 176, for a place in the last 32 at a slam for the first time.<\/p>\n The Australia trio join Jordan Thompson in the second round but Aleksandar Vukic, James Duckworth and wildcard Talia Gibson all bowed out.<\/p>\n Vukic lost a three-and-three-quarter-hour thriller 6-3 6-7 (4-7) 6-4 3-6 6-4 to American Jenson Brooksby, Duckworth succumbed 7-5 6-3 6-4 to US wildcard Tristan Boyer and Gibson fell 6-2 6-2 against Polish 28th seed Magdalena Frech.<\/p>\n Big guns Alex de Minaur, the men\u2019s eighth seed, and Alexei Popyrin open their campaigns on Wednesday (AEST).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia women\u2019s No 1 Daria Kasatkina has overcome a shaky start to ease into the second round while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-95915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}