Wednesday’s marquee matchup was between two former top 25 players: 30-year-old American Steve Johnson and 35-year-old Italian Andreas Seppi. It was the lower ranked Seppi who came out on top after disposing of his rival 7-6(4), 6-3.
They played quite a choppy first set, with 6 breaks in first 9 games. The set would be decided in a tiebreak, where Johnson handed the breaker to Seppi with some sloppy groundstroke errors. Stevie’s poor first service percentage of 45% allowed Andreas too many looks at second balls.
Johnson’s errors and service woes would continue in the second set, giving Seppi the early break. Serving at 1-4, 30-all in the second, a Johnson double fault along with a forehand error allowed Seppi a double break advantage. Andreas then served for the match at 5-1, though he couldn’t close it out despite earning three match points. However, the Italian would eventually prevail 6-3 in the second, serving out the match at love in his second attempt.
Earlier in the day, 20-year-old up-and-comer Miomir Kecmanovic easily dispatched of tour veteran Paolo Lorenzi 6-3, 6-3. This match was decided much more quickly than their only previous meeting, which was also in New York. Six months ago at the US Open, it took five sets and nearly five hours to settle matters between these two in a second round match claimed by Lorenzi. On this day, Kecmanovic’s aggressive ground game proved too much for Lorenzi to withstand.
In the night session, second-seeded Milos Raonic was upset by 22-year-old Soonwoo Kwon, who prevailed 7-6(4), 6-7(4), 6-4. This second round three-setter consisted of only one break, which was earned by the Korean in the final set. After the match, as translated by his coach, Kwon spoke of how a new positive outlook has lead to better results this week in New York, as well as last week in Pune, India. “Little change of attitude we talked about before this week and last week,” Kwon said.
And the fourth seed, 21-year-old Ugo Humbert, dropped just one game to American Marcos Giron to earn his place in Friday’s quarter-finals.
Thursday will see the other four second round singles matches decided, in action headlined by the two tallest Americans on tour: top-seeded John Isner and defending champion Reilly Opelka.
