More Excitement at U.S. Tennis Open

By ESPN

Will Sofia Kenin walk out onto Arthur Ashe Stadium to play Maria Sharapova wearing multicolored tennis shoes with the word "believe" written on them? That's what the then-17-year-old Melanie Oudin did during an astonishing run that carried the virtually unknown Marietta, Georgia, native, ranked No. 70, to a win over Sharapova and ultimately all the way to the 2009 US Open quarterfinals.

Kenin, an 18-year-old Floridian, is a wild-card entry who's beaten No. 32 seed Lauren Davis and 22-year-old qualifier Sachia Vickery.

Sharapova and Kenin have no history, but the latter will probably have to play the match of her life in order to win. Sharapova seems dialed in and match-tough despite having played just 10 completed matches since returning in April after a 15-month doping suspension.

In yet another twist, Oudin herself retired a little over a week ago, at age 25, citing a series of injuries that began to plague her late in 2012. She made her retirement announcement in a series of tweets, writing, "It wasn't exactly the entire career I had dreamed of, but in life things don't always go as planned."

Here are some other compelling third-round matches:

United Nations match of the day

Like so many players these days, 22-year-old Kyle Edmund and 18-year-old Canadian sensation Denis Shapovalov were globetrotters from birth.

Edmund was born in South Africa, but emigrated to and plays for Great Britain. Shapovalov was born to Russian parents in Tel Aviv, but is a Canadian who now calls Nassau, Bahamas, home. Not to worry, northern friends, Shapovalov still loves the Toronto Maple Leafs!

Shapovalov crushed fellow #nextgen pro Daniil Medvedev and No. 8 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, while Edmund eliminated No. 32 Robin Haase and Steve Johnson in his first two matches.

The series is tied at 1-1, with both encounters this year. The southpaw Shapovalov eked out a 6-4 in-the-third win on grass at Queens Club this summer. Earlier this year, Edmund was rolling with a two-sets lead in a Davis Cup tie when Shapovalov retired with an injury.

Gorgeous scorecard

These days, most of the oxygen in tennis is sucked up by 30-and-over veterans enjoying unexpected, continuing success -- or the latest, greatest hard-charging prodigies. Where does that leave players like No. 78 Aleksandra Krunic or No. 30 seed Julia Goerges?

Answer: In the third round of the US Open, thanks to impressive wins so far. Krunic dumped No. 7 seed Johanna Konta and fellow 24-year-old Ajla Tomljanovic. Goerges has lost a grand total of just four games in her two previous matches. She also won her only previous encounter with Krunic.

Suddenly, Sam

Sam Querrey appears to have turned around his reputation as a "soft" contender when he battered his way to the semifinals of Wimbledon. Instead of experiencing a letdown (a familiar enemy), Querrey won a tournament (Lo Cabos).

The 6-foot-6 Californian, seeded No. 17, drew a tough first-round opponent in Gilles Simon, who can run anyone to the ground. But that big serve and forehand, along with a re-tooled backhand, have served Querrey well. He has yet to lose a set, and he's unlikely to drop one when he meets his next opponent, Radu Albot.

A Moldavian, Albot is a 27-year-old qualifier who had just two Grand Slam singles wins to his credit before he advanced to the third round with back-to-back five-set wins. On the horizon for Querrey: a potential fourth-round clash with familiar face, No. 10 seed John Isner.

Has Stephens hit the reset button?

As Roger Federer can attest, sometimes a long break from the game -- for any reason including injury -- is just what the proverbial doctor ordered for a stalled player. Sloane Stephens seems to have bought into the message.

Sidelined for nearly a full year with a right foot stress fracture that required surgery, she lost early at Wimbledon and Washington D.C. But then she caught fire, making the semifinals at the two big summer hard-court events, Toronto and Cincinnati. Stephens has a promising draw, with Ashleigh Barty next. This is close to a must-win match if Stephens, now 24, is going to realize her much-celebrated potential.

Long, like those spaghetti westerns

Fans from Brindisi to Genoa will thanking their lucky stars that the US Open employs a fifth-set tiebreaker when Thomas Fabbiano meets Paolo Lorenzi. Fabbiano, 28, hadn't won a Grand Slam singles match until this week; Lorenzi, 35, has come this far at just one other major in 25 previous tries. Both men survived knock-down, drag-out matches here, accounting for 17 sets, including five tiebreakers. But they have never played each other as pros. Order a large pizza and a liter-sized bottle of whatever if you plan to watch this one.

Most intriguing match of the day

Petra Kvitova, seeded No. 13 and still in the midst of her comeback, plays No. 18 seed Caroline Garcia. It says something about this draw that it's one of just two matches between seeded players at this stage in the bottom half of the draw.

This series is tied at 2-2. Garcia, a late bloomer from France, won the past two meetings. Kvitova is still recovering from her hand injury, but she's a two-time Wimbledon champion. This one screams barnburner.

Panic Meter Running High For Federer Fans

A man from Seattle flew 2,800 miles with his kids to see Roger Federer at the US Open. Jagbir Singh figured it would be a quick day Thursday, because it usually is when Federer plays an early-round match. Maybe they'd get an early supper. Somewhere around the fourth set, Singh's daughter buried her head in her lap and could no longer watch.

Such is life this week for Federer fans at the US Open.

Federer was neither elegant nor dominant, but he survived to beat Mikhail Youzhny 6-1, 6-7 (3), 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. It was the second straight match that Federer was pushed to the limit, as he also struggled against 19-year-old Frances Tiafoe on Tuesday night in the first round. This is the first time Federer has started any major tournament with consecutive five-set matches.

Federer joked in his on-court interview that long matches are fun and that they'd warm him up for the rest of the tournament. But his legions of fans who packed Arthur Ashe Stadium were far more stressed out. The 3-hour, 8-minute match was peppered with groans in between stunned silence. The crowd chanted his name and pumped their firsts along with Federer when he finally emerged from a day that resembled a boxing match between two middle-aged warriors.

Youzhny wasn't supposed to make it this interesting; he'd played Federer 16 times heading into Thursday and had lost every single match. They even played each other in juniors, back in the late 1990s. Federer was always the winner. But Youzhny almost pulled it off, and if the 35-year-old Russian hadn't had his first-round match moved to Wednesday, because of Tuesday's rain, maybe he could've pulled off the biggest upset of the US Open.

Maybe if Youzhny hadn't started cramping at the end of the third set, when he seemed in command, Federer's bid for three Grand Slams in 2017 would've ended. Federer, one of the smoothest and most fluent players in the history of tennis, had 68 unforced errors against a player who is ranked No. 101.

But if he was worried about Thursday's events, Federer certainly didn't show it. He was bantering with someone as he walked into his postgame news conference and spent oodles of time with the Swiss media roughly an hour after the match.

He insisted that the back injury that kept him out of the Cincinnati Masters two weeks ago was not a factor, and that he felt it was getting stronger.

He said he wasn't worried about fatigue being a factor later on in the tournament, either.

"I think because you're on a high, you're thrilled that you got through, so you don't look at the negative," Federer said. "Or I don't. Yes, I might feel more tired than I normally would going into a third round, but that's OK.

"My preparation hasn't been good at all here. I knew I was going to maybe struggle early on. Maybe I struggled more than I would have liked to. But I'm still in the draw, which gives me a chance. I still believe I'm going to pick up my game and become just more consistent, because I'm not playing all that bad. It's just that I'm going a bit up and down in waves throughout the match."

When he won Wimbledon in July, Federer went the entire tournament without dropping a set. That's how dominant he's been in 2017. He won the Australian Open after a six-month break from tennis in 2016 to rest and recover.

His fans will worry that his 36-year-old body might be running out of steam. That the renaissance year might be ending. Federer, for his part, isn't panicking. He admitted that his opener Tuesday night was probably scarier, just because he didn't know how his back would respond.

"Now I can just look forward to play tennis," he said. "With a bit of fatigue, that's OK. I've done that hundreds of times."

High in the rafters of Arthur Ashe Stadium on Thursday, Singh was one of the few Federer fans who wasn't worried. He and so many other tennis fans have come from all over because they know they're watching something special -- and someone who won't be around much longer.

Maybe Federer can feel that, too. He played a practice round in Central Park on Wednesday, and all the people who left their courts to watch energized him. Federer said he hopes he can do it again, that he'll have many more days like this in New York. For Federer's sake, they need to be shorter days.