His incredible performance came on a day when organizers invoked the tournament’s rarely used extreme weather policy and fans fled the stands to seek refuge in the shade from the blazing sun.
For most of his match, Djokovic was soaked in sweat and gasping for air, playing an opponent showing no signs of weariness.
It was only in the fifth set, when the sun began to set and Troicki started to wilt, that relief finally came.
“It was like, I don’t know, sleeping with my girlfriend, I guess, kind of feeling,” Djokovic told the crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Jankovic, a finalist in New York in 2008, beat Romanian Simona Halep 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 after Kuznetsova, champion in 2004 and runner-up in 2007, had to work overtime to beat Japan’s Kimiko Date Krumm 6-2, 4-6, 6-1.
“It’s not easy to play in these kind of conditions,” Jankovic said. “You have to just try your best.”
Under the tournament’s extreme heat policy, players are allowed to request a 10-minute break between the second and third sets if the mercury exceeds 30.1ºC before the start of the match.
Kuznetsova’s match on the Grandstand court began before the policy was invoked, meaning the players could not have a break between sets, but they were given ice packs at the change of ends and were sheltered by umbrellas.
Maria Sharapova, the 2006 US Open champion, was also given a tough workout by Australia’s Jarmila Groth in their match, played at dusk when the weather had cooled, before prevailing 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.
Sharapova’s compatriot and Wimbledon finalist Vera Zvonareva had a much easier time against Slovakia’s Zuzana Kucova at the Louis Armstrong Stadium, winning 6-2, 6-1.
After two days of few surprises, eight seeded players made early exits in the severe conditions.
The biggest casualty in the men’s draw was Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus, seeded 16, while the highest women’s seed to fall was China’s Li Na, seeded eighth.
The exception was Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki, last year’s runner-up and the top seed this year in the absence of world No. 1 Serena Williams.
Her match did not begin until just before midnight local time because of the earlier backlog, but she made up for lost time by thumping US wild-card Chelsey Gullickson 6-1, 6-1 in just 61 minutes.
RSS