US Open Tennis 2017: TV Schedule, Picks for Wednesday Afternoon Draw

The 2017 U.S. Open will be playing catch-up on Wednesday following a rain-soaked Tuesday that disrupted or postponed dozens of tennis matches. 

The likes of Richard Gasquet, Dominic Thiem and Elina Svitolina will have to pick up where they left off on Tuesday and try to finish off their opponents, while Nick Kyrgios and Agnieszka Radwanska had their matches cancelled and will have to fit their contests in early. 

Top players like Venus Williams, Garbine Muguruza, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and the ascendant Alexander Zverev will look to continue their winning ways with second-round contests previously scheduled for Day 3.

There's plenty to take in on Wednesday in Flushing Meadows, New York. Here's how you can watch.

TV Schedule

WatchESPN will carry the first- and second-round action from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET via live stream. Television coverage begins when ESPN picks up the action from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., and then it will switch over to ESPN2 until 11 p.m. The Tennis Channel will be live with pre-match coverage from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. 

WatchESPN will of course be live-streaming throughout, with options for individual matches and courts in addition to the regular television programming.

       

Picks for Notable Wednesday Matches

Eugenie Bouchard over Evgeniya Rodina

Maria Sharapova over Timea Babos

No. 9 Venus Williams over Oceane Dodin

No. 14 Nick Kyrgios over John Millman

No. 10 John Isner over Hyeon Chung

No. 8 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga over Denis Shapovalov

Alison Riske over No. 20 Coco Vandeweghe

No. 4 Alexander Zverev over Borna Coric

No. 7 Grigor Dimitrov over Vaclav Safranek

Julien Benneteau over No. 9 David Goffin

No. 5 Caroline Wozniacki over Ekaterina Makarova

No. 10 Agnieszka Radwanska over Petra Martic

Sloane Stephens over No. 11 Dominika Cibulkova

No. 3 Garbine Muguruza over Ying-Ying Duan

          
Maria Sharapova will look to continue her winning ways after defeating No. 2 Simona Halep in an electric first-round contest Monday, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3. It was Sharapova's first Grand Slam match since serving a 15-month suspension for a positive drug test. Her last was at the 2016 Australian Open, where she fell to Serena Williams. 

ESPN Stats & Info noted it had been quite some time since an upset like this happened, though Sharapova is no ordinary unranked foe:

Sharapova's next opponent is Timea Babos, a 24-year-old Hungarian with far more success as a doubles player than in singles matches to date. Babos is 11-21 in singles play this year with one title to her name.

Elsa/Getty Images

Sharapova is still getting back in the swing of things following suspension and a summer where she hardly played, but she showed resolve against Halep and her talent is undeniable. Granted a wild-card entry into the U.S. Open, Sharapova could end up wreaking havoc as an unseeded player if she continues to play the way she did against Halep. 

Zverev may have beaten his first-round opponent Darian King in straight sets on Monday, but he didn't make it look easy against the pride of Barbados tennis. Zverev hit 62 unforced errors to 54 winners and managed to get just 57 percent of his first serves in.

At the very least, he looked good in his Pharrell Williams-designed duds, per U.S. Open Tennis on Twitter:

The 20-year-old is tipped for superstardom, but King made for a difficult first opponent and many will be looking for sharper stuff from Zverev against Borna Coric in the second round. 

No. 14 Nick Kyrgios will make his 2017 tournament debut Wednesday against fellow Australian John Millman. Kyrgios is coming off a run to the final in the Western & Southern Open, where he lost to Grigor Dimitrov. 

The mercurial Kyrgios is in fine form, and in a men's crowd missing a host of top-ranked players, he will look to make a deep run at a Grand Slam where he has failed to get past the first round. 

As for No. 9 Venus Williams, she will hope to keep marching on in Flushing Meadows against Oceane Dodin. Williams needed three sets to get past Viktoria Kuzmova in the first round of her 19th U.S. Open, hitting 28 unforced errors to just 19 winners.

Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Williams, 37, is a cool 17 years older than Dodin, but she's having a banner year, and the New York Times' Juliet Macur said she should be appreciated for who she is as a player, regardless of her age:

"Williams is obviously much closer to the end of her career than the beginning. How close, only she knows. So it’s natural to wonder if this tournament or that one will be her last hurrah, or if this might be the last time you see her at the U.S. Open, rocketing balls as fiery as comets into the opposite court. It’s appropriate to feel nostalgic.

"But it’s also another chance to forget all that, a time to just soak in her grace and her power once again, to marvel at her 120-plus-miles-per-hour serves and her lithe and long-limbed elegance. It’s a time to salute her exemplary sportsmanship, her qualifying-tournament ego in a Grand Slam body."

Williams has never played Dodin in WTA competition, but you can expect her to treat this match with the same intensity and focus she has shown throughout her brilliant career.

All stats courtesy of USOpen.org unless otherwise noted.