Roger Federer has made light of energy-sapping conditions to brush past Yoshihito Nishioka in his opening match at the US Open while Novak Djokovic was pushed by the heat and his opponent in his first-round win
Where other players had slogged through long rallies as the temperature hit 90 Fahrenheit (32C), Federer kept his time on court to a minimum with a 6-2 6-2 6-4 victory in an evening match on Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Federer, the second seed, broke the Japanese left-hander in the opening game of the one-sided encounter and never looked back, rattling through his service games to wrap up the first set in 28 minutes.
The Swiss took 35 minutes to close out the second and raced to a 4-0 lead in the third before Nishioka rallied briefly.
But Federer served out the match in one hour and 52 minutes to move on to a meeting with Frenchman Benoit Paire.
Djokovic overcame Marton Fucsovic in punishing temperatures that prompted officials to observe a heat rule for men’s singles matches for the first time.
The Serb sixth seed looked in real trouble in the steamy conditions and admitted to feeling sick during the almost three hour encounter but recovered to win 6-3 3-6 6-4 6-0.
The players took a 10-minute break between the third and fourth sets to help them cope with the conditions and spent the downtime side-by-side, “naked in the ice baths,” Djokovic said in a post-match broadcast interview.
“It was quite a magnificent feeling, I must say.”
After claiming the first set, a visibly exhausted Djokovic smashed his racket as Fucsovics led 3-2 in the second.
In between the action, both players draped themselves in ice towels and at one point Djokovic sat shirtless in his seat.
“Obviously I felt better, especially after that 10-minute break” Djokovic said.
“For the first three sets, it was a survival mode for both of us.”
Cilic clinched a second-round berth after opponent Marius Copil of Romania retired with a left-arm strain in the third set trailing the seventh-ranked Croatian 7-5 6-1 1-1.
Cilic, who said it was “one of the most brutal days that we had so far this year,” told reporters the heat, plus the pressure of the shot clock introduced at the tournament this year, had proved challenging.
German fourth seed Alexander Zverev hit 37 winners on his way to dispatching Peter Polansky 6-2 6-1 6-2 in an hour and 35 minutes.
“It’s never easy and obviously the conditions are tough for everyone because of the heat and humidity,” Zverev said in an on-court interview.
Other first-round winners on Tuesday were Spanish 12th seed Pablo Carreno Busta, Argentine 13th seed Diego Schwartzman, 14th-seeded Italian Fabio Fognini, Japanese 21st seed Kei Nishikori, 23rd-seeded South Korean Hyeon Chung and French 26th seed Richard Gasquet.