By Gus "Walk-Off" Fields
Carlos Alcaraz dropped the first set to Jaime Faria and looked, for a few uneasy games, like a man still shaking off rust from injury. Then he won eight straight games and didn't look back, closing out a 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 6-2 victory to reach the US Open third round, according to ESPN and the BBC. The defending champion called it staying calm under pressure — a fair description of a night that started shaky and ended in total command.
On the women's side, Aryna Sabalenka needed just 53 minutes to dispatch her opponent and move into the third round, the BBC reported, extending the two-time defending champion's habit of making the early rounds look routine. The tennis, by all accounts, was one-sided. The aftermath wasn't: Sabalenka had a pointed exchange with a journalist afterward, the tension from a dominant but evidently frustrating stretch of the tournament showing through, per the BBC's account. Specifics of what was said were not detailed in available reporting.
Both results keep the tournament's headline contenders on track. Alcaraz, chasing a repeat title while working back from injury, has now shown he can lose a set and still steamroll the response — a dangerous quality this deep into a Grand Slam draw. Sabalenka, meanwhile, remains the player nobody wants to face on a fast court and short clock.
The draw gets tougher from here for both. For one night at Flushing Meadows, though, the scoreboard did the talking — mostly.
Final score's the last thing that mattered here.
— Compiled from reporting by ESPN and BBC Sport.
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