By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK, Sept 1 (Reuters) – Second seed Elena Rybakina breathed a sigh of relief with her first-round win at the U.S. Open on Tuesday, after a leg injury in Cincinnati had caused her to doubt whether she could even play in New York.
The Kazakh eased into the second round with a clinical 6-3 6-2 win over American Thea Frodin, but there was nothing easy about her preparation for the year’s final major, with little time to regroup after she retired from the tune-up tournament.
“I call for the physio in Cincinnati. She said the Achilles tendon was not broken, so that was kind of a good thing, but of course I still had the pain,” said Rybakina.
“From that, we started my recovery. We didn’t know if I’m going to be able to play here or not. I’m pretty happy, of course, that I’m playing right now, and we were taking day by day. I was not playing for the full week, so seven days no tennis and basically not too much gym I could do movement-wise.
“So it’s a great result after 10 days from that kind of injury.”
Injuries have once again become a major theme of the U.S. Open, with top-ranked Jannik Sinner among the high-profile absences on the men’s side, and defending champion Carlos Alcaraz returning to the court this week after a long injury layoff.
Rybakina, a two-time Grand Slam champion, appeared untroubled as she launched her bid for the title and the world number one ranking but said she would have to see what kind of toll the match took on her body.
“Right now I feel okay. Of course we’ll see again day by day how I will wake up tomorrow, since it’s the first match and kind of a lot of movement,” she told reporters. “In the moment I got injured, it was the serve. I think everybody could see. Now it’s okay. I can’t tell you more.”
She next plays either Czech Darja Vidmanova or Spain’s Jessica Bouzas Maneiro.
NO HOLLYWOOD END FOR FRODIN
The Grandstand match was among the most highly anticipated for American fans, as Frodin made her Grand Slam main-draw debut five years after portraying a young Serena Williams in the Oscar-winning film “King Richard”.
The 17-year-old tennis-playing double for the film showed flashes of brilliance, with 11 aces, after fans waited nearly four hours through a rain delay to watch her on the Grandstand.
But she struggled to trouble the Australian Open champion in her first tour-level match, as Rybakina broke in the sixth game on the way to taking a largely uneventful opening set and maintained control in the second.
Frodin drew some of the loudest cheers of the match when she saved three match points with aces in the penultimate game, but Rybakina sealed victory with an ace of her own.
“She played really well today and she has great shots,” said Rybakina, who paused as she packed her kit to join the crowd’s ovation for Frodin.
“It was not easy and I’m just happy to be here, playing here.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New YorkEditing by Toby Davis)
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