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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"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}]}}