Kwon Soon-woo, Ilya Ivashka knocked out of doubles competition at U.S. Open
Kwon Soon-woo and Belarusian tennis player Ilya Ivashka bowed out of the first round of the men’s doubles at the U.S. Open on Wednesday.
The pair, playing together for the first time, faced off together against Philipp Oswald of Austria and Robin Haase of the Netherlands, who are professional doubles players.
Kwon is No. 81 in the men’s singles and No. 292 in the doubles and Ivashka is No. 73 in the singles and No. 542 in the doubles, while Haase is No. 55 in the doubles and Oswald is No. 71 in the doubles.
Despite going against players that only compete in the doubles event, Kwon and Ivashka put up a significant performance, losing the first set 6-4 but pushing the second to a tiebreaker. The European pair eventually took Kwon and Ivashka’s serve to win the second set 7-5 and advance to the second round.
Kwon and Ivashka also had seven aces, one more than the European pair, and a higher success rate in their first serve at 78 percent, while the opponents had a 66 percent first serve success rate.
With the loss, Kwon has now failed to reach the second round of the men’s doubles in three Grand Slams this year, but did reach the third round of the men’s doubles at the Australian Open.
However, Kwon and Ivashka are still in contention for the men’s singles title after both winning their first round matches.
Ivashka beat Sam Querrey of the United States three sets to one on Monday to reach the second round while Kwon also beat Fernando Verdasco of Spain on Tuesday.
Kwon is now facing an uphill battle in the second round of the men’s singles as he is scheduled to face world No. 11 Andrey Rublev on Thursday local time, or Friday in Korea.
This will be the fourth time Kwon has faced the Russian, losing all three previous encounters. In February, Rublev beat Kwon in the round of 16 at the Rotterdam Open, then two weeks later in the round of 16 at the Dubai Tennis Championships. The most recent time the two played faced each other was at the French Open in July, when Rublev beat Kwon in the first round, three sets to one.
Kwon’s best result at the men’s singles at the U.S. Open to date is reaching the second round in 2020, while his best-ever Grand Slam result was at last year’s Roland Garros, where he reached the third round.
BY YUN SO-HYANG [yun.sohyang@joongang.co.kr]