At a rainy U.S. Open where it's a struggle to even finish the first round, Jessica Pegula was happy to quickly be into the third.
The No. 3 seed needed only 56 minutes on Wednesday to defeat Sofia Kenin 6-3, 6-1. Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion, beat Venus Williams in her first match.
"To be out of there in under an hour, it doesn't always happen," Pegula said. "So I think I'm just going to take that one and run, I guess, until the next round."
No. 31 seed Leylah Fernandez set up a matchup of past U.S. Open runners-up against Pegula, with the winner to meet either No. 16 Sorana Cirstea or No. 19 Jasmine Paolini.
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Some players won't get there for a while. With rain coming down for a second day in New York, play was suspended again for a time on outside courts, allowing only play under the roofs in Arthur Ashe Stadium and Louis Armstrong Stadium to continue uninterrupted.
No. 8 seed Ben Shelton followed Pegula on Ashe and beat Hubert Hurkacz 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (3), 7-5, while No. 7 Daniil Medvedev raced past Sebastian Gorzny — except for a brief delay to protest the chair umpire's decision to replay a point when two birds sat on the net — 6-3, 6-3, 7-5.
Defending champions Aryna Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz were set to play on Ashe at night. Those are second-round matches, while some players were still playing their first.
When the U.S. Open switched to a Sunday start last year, it spread out the first round over the first three days, so Wednesday would have arrived with everyone playing in the second round had the weather cooperated.
Alex de Minaur, the No. 6 seed from Australia, said with all the juggling his match was moved twice from the court where he was originally scheduled. He finally started his U.S. Open on Wednesday on Court 11 and beat Italy's Andrea Guerrieri 6-2, 6-2, 6-4.
"It's been a couple tough days. But I mean, these tournaments, it's all about adapting and that's the name of the game," de Minaur said. "There's too much to play for to let something like this affect you."
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Paula Badosa said she didn't even know how to prepare for the resumption of her match against Daria Kasatkina, which was halted Tuesday with her one game from winning to set up a second-round match against No. 4 Coco Gauff.
"I didn't know if I was going to play just two points or six, or I don't know how much, how many I play or one more set," the Spaniard said Wednesday after finishing off her 6-1, 6-4 victory.
"So I knew that if I was winning this match, I'm playing the next day. So, yeah, it was everything a bit different. I was very nervous that I even couldn't eat, so a lot of different stuff I did today, but sometimes it is how it is, and I tried to play with the things I had there."
