Top-ranked defending champion Novak Djokovic rolled into the US Open fourth round while Serena Williams and Roger Federer cruised into the last 16 and Kei Nishikori was eliminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Djokovic, champion in four of the past five Slams and 16 overall, was less bothered by left shoulder pain that nagged him in the second round in defeating 111th-ranked American Denis Kudla 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know how my body would react. That was nice.\u201d Djokovic, who needed treatment throughout his second-round triumph, skipped practice Thursday in favour of shoulder treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 32-year-old Serbian, a three-time US Open winner, booked a Sunday showdown with three-time Slam winner Stan Wawrinka, the Swiss 23rd seed who eliminated Italian lucky loser Paolo Lorenzi 6-4, 7-6 (11\/9), 7-6 (7\/4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something with him that when I get into my best game, I know that it\u2019s going to have some big rallies and I\u2019m going to play good tennis,\u201d Wawrinka said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Djokovic, no worse than a US Open semi-finalist since a third-round exit in 2006, leads Wawrinka 19-5 in their all-time rivalry, but they haven\u2019t met since Wawrinka beat Djokovic in the 2016 US Open final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a three-time Grand Slam champion, someone that possesses a game with a lot of power, a lot of quality. Let the better player win.\u201dFederer routed Britain\u2019s 58th-ranked Dan Evans 6-2, 6-2, 6-1 in only 80 minutes, blasting 48 winners to just seven for Evans. After dropping the first set in his first two matches, the 20-time Grand Slam champion was solid from start to finish.\u201cWhat matters the most is that I\u2019m in the third round after those two sort of slow starts,\u201d Federer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Top-ranked defending champion Novak Djokovic rolled into the US Open fourth round while Serena Williams and Roger Federer cruised into the last 16 and Kei Nishikori was eliminated. Djokovic, champion in four of the past five Slams and 16 overall, was less bothered by left shoulder pain that nagged him in the second round in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69449,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69447\/revisions\/69449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}