Auger-Aliassime's US Open draw: every round asks him for one more ball
Félix Auger-Aliassime arrives in New York as the third seed, promoted by the withdrawal of Jannik Sinner (right knee), and he sits in the half of the draw that holds neither Carlos Alcaraz nor Novak Djokovic, who ended up on the same side. The shape of his quarter, though, works against him. From the fourth round onwards he meets, one after another, players who lengthen the rally, and the tennis that took him to the semi-finals here in 2025 lives on the opposite: points closed within three shots when he is serving.
The first three rounds are running-in material. Rinky Hijikata (No. 85) on debut, never played before; in the second round Karen Khachanov or Román Burruchaga, with the Russian the head-to-head is 2-2; in the third the Peruvian Ignacio Buse, seeded 32nd. Then the draw starts asking questions.
The fourth round is the first real fork
Learner Tien (No. 14) is the wrong opponent for a player who builds his advantage off the serve. The precedent is recent and instructive: in Halle, in June, on grass, Auger-Aliassime served 22 aces and won 88% of his first-serve points. He still won 6-7(5), 7-5, 7-6(5), in two hours and thirty-one minutes, coming back in the deciding tie-break from 1-4 and then from 3-5.
That figure is the point. An almost perfect day on serve, on the surface that rewards serving most, produced no margin for him. Tien returns deep and puts the second serve back in play, and every ball returned forces Auger-Aliassime to hit the fourth shot, which is the area of the court where the Canadian gains least. On the Flushing Meadows hard courts, slower and with a higher bounce than the Halle grass, the aces of that afternoon do not repeat themselves.
The alternative in the same section is Jakub Mensik (No. 17), a Roland-Garros semi-finalist. It is the opposite matchup and, for Auger-Aliassime, the more readable one: two heavy serves, few breaks, a match decided in tie-breaks.
Cobolli in the quarters, and Paris counts for less than it seems
Flavio Cobolli (No. 5) knocked him out in the Roland-Garros quarter-finals 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4: first set won by the Canadian, then three lost in a row. On clay the Italian had the time to get back into the rally from defensive positions and to turn it around off the forehand side. On American hard courts that time shortens, and Auger-Aliassime's serve plus first shot arrive before Cobolli has managed to move him.
The precedent still weighs, for a reason other than the surface. The Canadian won the first set and lost the next three, which is to say he gave up control of the scoreline when his opponent raised the average rally length. It is the same mechanism by which Frances Tiafoe beat him 6-3, 6-4 in the Cincinnati round of 16 this month.
In the same quarter there is also Taylor Fritz (No. 9), a finalist here in 2024: the opposite kind of problem and, for Auger-Aliassime's game, the preferable quarter-final.
The semi-final with Zverev, and what could overturn the prediction
On the other side of his half there is Alexander Zverev, the top seed, who in June won Roland Garros beating Cobolli 6-1, 4-6, 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-1. The useful precedent is twelve months old and in this stadium: at the 2025 US Open Auger-Aliassime knocked him out in the third round 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-4, 6-4, in a match decided by the second-set tie-break. Zverev returns from a long way behind the baseline and puts even the heavy first serves back in play, so he shifts the decision onto long service games, where the Canadian spends more.
2026 has settled him firmly inside the top five of the rankings, with a career high of No. 4 and the quarter-finals or better in three of his last four Slams. With Sinner absent and Alcaraz returning after four months, the quarter-finals are the realistic plan and the semi-final a concrete possibility, not the prediction. The title, no: to get there he would have to win three matches in a row against players who force him to stay on court, and in Cincinnati, after the Montreal withdrawal with his back, he did not show that staying power.
The condition that overturns all of it is measurable as early as the second and third rounds. If he keeps his first-serve percentage above 65% and closes out his service games without letting them stretch, the fourth round against Tien becomes manageable and the semi-final is within reach. If instead he arrives at the fourth round with dropped sets behind him and a back to manage, he goes out there, and the Halle precedent says it will take a tie-break to find out anyway.
