Kazakh tennis player Anna Danilina and Serbia's Aleksandra Krunic got off to a winning start in the women's doubles at the US Open, reports infohub.kz.
The third-seeded pair defeated Chile's Alexa Guarachi and Egypt's Mayar Sherif 7:5, 7:6 (9:7) in the first round. The match lasted 1 hour 59 minutes. In the opening set, Danilina and Krunic finished stronger to take it 7:5. The second set went to a tie-break, where the Kazakh-Serbian duo prevailed 9-7.
Match statistics: Danilina and Krunic landed 74% of first serves and won 21 of 29 points on their first delivery (72%). They hit 21 winners against 17 for their opponents, and committed eight unforced errors to nine for Guarachi and Sherif.
In the next round, the third seeds will face the winners of the match between Tatjana Maria/Zeynep Sonmez and Ekaterina Alexandrova/Talia Gibson.
In singles, Elena Rybakina and Alexander Bublik are still in contention. In the second round, Rybakina defeated Spain's Jessica Bouzas Maneiro, while Bublik beat France's Adrian Mannarino. Yulia Putintseva ended her campaign after a second-round loss to China's Zheng Qinwen. Alexander Shevchenko lost to Croatia's Dino Prižmić in the opening round.
The US Open is an annual Grand Slam tennis tournament played on hard courts, the last of the four majors in the calendar year. For the second consecutive year, the US Open, which was first held in August 1881, starts a week earlier due to the rescheduled mixed doubles event. The total prize money of $108 million is a record for the majors. Since 1978, matches have been held at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York.
The defending men's champion is Spain's Carlos Alcaraz, who defeated Jannik Sinner 6:2, 3:6, 6:1, 6:4 in last year's final. The Italian, the world No. 1, withdrew from the 2026 US Open due to a knee injury. In women's singles, Belarus' Aryna Sabalenka won in 2025, beating American Amanda Anisimova 6:3, 7:6 (7:3) in the final.