NEW YORK, August 30. /TASS/. Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev defeated Arthur Cazaux of France in the first round of the US Open tournament in New York early on Wednesday.

Rublev, seeded eighth, beat his opponent 6:4, 7:6 (7:5), 6:1. Arthur Cazaux got a chance to compete as a lucky loser after Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland (not seeded) withdrew from the tournament with an illness.

In the next round, Rublev will face the winter of the match between Gael Monfils (France) and Taro Daniel (Japan).

Rublev, 25, is currently ranked 8th in the ATP’s World Rankings. He is the winner of 14 ATP tournaments, winning two of them in the current season. He has also appeared in numerous Grand Slam tournaments, never going further than the quarterfinals. While playing for the Russian national team, he took home the gold at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in mixed doubles (with teammate Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova) and also won the 2021 Davis Cup.

The 2023 US Open is being held on outdoor hard courts at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York between August 28 and September 10. The tournament has $65 mln in prize money up for grabs. Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz and Poland’s Iga Swiatek are the defending champions at the 2023 US Open in the men’s and women's singles, respectively.

Tennis players from Russia and Belarus are participating in the tournament under a neutral status due to the current sanction regime.