U.S. Open Results: Marin Cilic Loses; New Aunt Venus Williams Wins

One of these men will be in the U.S. Open final.

Venus Williams Advances

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Venus Williams reached the fourth round of the U.S. Open for the 15th time in 19 appearances, beating Maria Sakkari, 6-3, 6-4, in the final match of the day session on Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Williams took the court just as news media reports began circulating that her sister Serena had given birth to her child in Florida.

Venus Williams’s serve was not at its most potent, hitting no aces and eight double faults, but she returned tenaciously, winning half of the points on Sakkari’s serve.

Williams has become a fixture deep into Grand Slam tournaments again, reaching the fourth round or better at nine of the last 10, after a period of struggles after she first announced her diagnosis of Sjogren’s syndrome.

Williams will face Carla Suarez Navarro in the fourth round. Suarez Navarro beat Williams at the 2009 Australian Open, but Williams leads their head-to-head 4-3, including two wins at Wimbledon.

Suarez Navarro will play Williams on her 29th birthday, Sept. 3. The last time she played a Williams sister on her birthday, in 2013, she lost, 6-0, 6-0, to Serena in 53 minutes.

Read Juliet Macur’s column on Venus Williams here.

Stephens’s Comeback Continues

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Two players who have embarked on very different types of comebacks met at Louis Armstrong Stadium on Friday afternoon.

Sloane Stephens, not all that far removed from an 11-month layoff because of a foot injury, and Ashleigh Barty, back on tour after an extended hiatus playing professional cricket, faced each other in a third-round match at the U.S. Open, where Stephens easily advanced with a 6-2, 6-4 victory.

Stephens, a 24-year-old American who had surgery on her right foot in January, now appears to be playing some of the finest tennis of her career. After defeating 11th-seeded Dominika Cibulkova in the second round, Stephens needed just 1 hour 17 minutes to dispatch Barty, a 21-year-old Australian who committed 31 unforced errors.

“I had a lot of opportunities, and it’s disappointing I couldn’t quite consolidate on a few,” Barty said. “But in saying that, she played great and probably deserved to win more than I did.”

It has been a remarkable resurgence for Stephens, a former top-15 player who did not begin playing again until July. But after she had strong showing at the Rogers Cup in Toronto last month, where she defeated Petra Kvitova and Angelique Kerber en route to the semifinals, her world ranking jumped 783 spots. Her confidence seemed to balloon heading into the Open.

Now ranked 83rd, Stephens will face 30th-seeded Julia Goerges in the fourth round. It will be Stephens’s first appearance in the fourth round at a Grand Slam event since the 2015 French Open, where she lost to Serena Williams, the eventual champion. — SCOTT CACCIOLA

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Friday’s Results

? Denis Shapovalov’s surprising run at his first U.S. Open continued as he advanced to the fourth round when his injured opponent, Kyle Edmund, retired from their match with Shapovalov leading 3-6, 6-3, 6-3, 1-0. Shapovalov will face the 12th-seeded Pablo Carreño Busta on Sunday. Carreño Busta is the highest remaining seed in the bottom half of the draw.

Read more about Shapovalov’s win here.

? Maria Sharapova rolled into the fourth round of her first Grand Slam tournament since January 2016, defeating the 18-year-old American Sofia Kenin, 7-5, 6-2. Sharapova will play 16th-seeded Anastasija Sevastova on Sunday.

? Borna Coric could not back up his upset of Alexander Zverev, losing in the third round to No. 28 seed Kevin Anderson, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2. Anderson will play Paolo Lorenzi, who is in the fourth round of a Grand Slam event for the first time at age 35.

? Sam Querrey, the No. 17 seed, defeated the qualifier Radu Albot, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 to reach the fourth round at the Open for only the third time in his career. He will face 23rd-seeded Mischa Zverev, who defeated No. 10 John Isner, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (5), on Friday night. Querrey, a Wimbledon semifinalist, is the last American man remaining in singles.

? Garbiñe Muguruza, the reigning Wimbledon champion, has been demolishing her opponents at the U.S. Open. Through her first three matches of the tournament, including Friday’s third-round win against Magdalena Rybarikova, Muguruza has spent a total of 3 hours 9 minutes on court, losing only nine games without dropping a set.

Her match against Rybarikova was a reprise of their semifinal meeting at Wimbledon, and the result was identical: a 6-1, 6-1 victory for Muguruza, seeded third here. (It took 61 minutes.)

“My shots were there,” Muguruza said.

With the win, Muguruza also knocked Venus Williams and Simona Halep out of contention in the race for the No. 1 ranking, winnowing the field from five to three. Along with Muguruza, Karolina Pliskova (the current No. 1) and Elina Svitolina (No. 4) are still in the running.

Muguruza will face Petra Kvitova, the No. 13 seed, in the fourth round.

? Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion, easily advanced with a 6-0, 6-4 win against Carolina Garcia in the third round. Kvitova, the No. 13 seed and a quarterfinalist here in 2015, had lost her two most recent meetings with Garcia, the No. 18 seed. But Kvitova did not even face a break point on her serve as she rolled in the first match of the day on Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Kvitova described the match as another step toward normalcy about eight months after she was attacked during a robbery at her home in the Czech Republic. She sustained tendon and nerve damage to her left hand and missed about five months.

“Sometimes I do feel a little bit more normal than before,” Kvitova said, “especially on the court and around players and people, around the tennis, which I’m very grateful that I can be part of again. The life is still a little bit strange, but it’s getting better, as well. Hopefully one day it will be better.”

— SCOTT CACCIOLA

Choosing Tennis Over Medicine

Paolo Lorenzi was meant to be a doctor. Instead of watching Saturday morning cartoons, his father, Marco, would show Paolo and his older brother Bruno preparatory videos of coming surgeries he was set to perform.

When he was 18, Paolo Lorenzi, despite being an accomplished junior tennis player, went to the local university in Siena, Italy, to study medicine. Seventeen years later, he still pays token tuition annually to maintain his student status, even though he no longer believes he will ever practice medicine.

“I have taken some exams, but now I think it is too late for me to be a doctor,” said Lorenzi after beating his countryman Thomas Fabbiano, 6-2, 6-4, 6-4, to reach his first round of 16 at the U.S. Open. “Now I think my career is as a tennis player.”

At 35, Lorenzi is the oldest male player in the Open era to reach a major fourth round for the first time. He began his career going 0-13 in Grand Slam main draws; on 23 occasions, he has failed to advance past qualifying.

But last year Lorenzi reached the third round here with a five-set win over Gilles Simon that lasted 4 hours 54 minutes. He lost in the next round to Andy Murray. Last summer he won his first ATP title, in Kitzbühel, Austria, and this past May he hit a career-high ranking of No. 33.

Lorenzi credited his late surge to his coach, Claudio Galoppini, and his fitness trainer, Stefano Giovannini.

“They really helped me learn to move better and improve my serve,” said Lorenzi, who will play 28th-seeded Kevin Anderson for a spot in the quarterfinals.

He does not miss being a doctor.

“There are enough surgeons in my family,” he says. “Besides, if I do become a doctor one day, I will be a sports medicine doctor.” — CINDY SHMERLER

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