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New York - 09/04

Tie-BreakfastSep 4Sep 4, 20267 min

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Today is Friday 4 September, in New York it is 02:30 and it is 24 degrees. Right, off we go.

On the breakfast table

🇮🇹 Musetti goes out to Sweeny between the heat and dizzy spells
🇮🇹 Cobolli and Darderi come through, Bellucci swept aside by Fritz
🇵🇱 Swiatek sees off Podoroska in two sets
🇷🇺 Khachanov knocks out Auger-Aliassime, de Minaur falls to van de Zandschulp
🇺🇸 Gauff gets past Badosa, Rybakina gives nothing away
🇫🇷 Monfils's last US Open ends against Tien
🇩🇪 Zverev goes five again: he beats Halys after more than four and a half hours

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY:

🇮🇹 Musetti goes out to Sweeny

Dane Sweeny beat Lorenzo Musetti 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 in the second round. The Australian, a wild card ranked 123 in the world, lost the first set and then won eighteen of the next twenty-three games. Musetti called a medical time-out at 0-3 down in the third, and from there the match was about managing his body rather than his tennis.

In his press conference he explained that the heat did not help and that the jump in temperature between the locker rooms and the court made it worse, adding that after the discomfort started there was never a moment of recovery.

"Nothing: basically we can't take anything. Ice, trying to bring the temperature down, sugars,"

he said about the remedies available on court. It is a second round at the sixth US Open of his career, twelve months after the quarter-finals, and the phrase he used to sum up the year, a 2026 that feels to him like an odyssey, says more than any statistic about the kind of season he is going through. Sweeny is 25, stands 170 centimetres tall and had come through the first round only because Moutet retired.

🇮🇹 Cobolli and Darderi through, Bellucci swept aside by Fritz

Flavio Cobolli lost the first set to Tristan Schoolkate and then won three in a row for a 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 7-5, while Luciano Darderi got past Dalibor Svrcina 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-4. Taylor Fritz beat Mattia Bellucci 6-0, 6-1, 6-1 on the Arthur Ashe.

For Bellucci it was the second Ashe of his career, twelve months after Alcaraz, and the match lasted about as long as it takes to understand how much Fritz's serve weighs when it lands at that percentage. Cobolli lined up the same thing that had worked for him in the first round after four hours and twelve minutes, which is staying inside the match until the opponent drops, and this time four sets were enough. Darderi managed a match that had complicated itself for no reason after a comfortable first set. Of the four Italians on court on Thursday, two are left, which, given how the day had started, was not a given.

🇵🇱 Swiatek sees off Podoroska

Iga Swiatek beat Nadia Podoroska 6-3, 6-2 in the day session, never letting the Argentinian into the match.

Swiatek is going through this tournament with a regularity that has not always come to her in New York, and the striking number is how little time she is spending on court. From the third round the draw stiffens, and that will be the moment we find out whether this version holds up when the match stretches out too.

WHAT HAPPENED OVERNIGHT:

🇷🇺 Khachanov knocks out Auger-Aliassime, de Minaur falls to van de Zandschulp

Karen Khachanov beat Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-2, 6-2. The Canadian, the third seed and a semi-finalist in New York a year ago, won 41% of his second-serve points (20 of 49) against the Russian's 61%, faced twenty break points and conceded seven, finishing with 47 unforced errors. On the same night Botic van de Zandschulp knocked out Alex de Minaur, the sixth seed, 6-4, 7-5, 6-2.

For Khachanov it is a second win over a top-10 player at a Slam in nineteen attempts, the first since June 2019, and seven years of waiting explain the kind of match he played. de Minaur goes out in the second round to a player who has reached Slam quarter-finals everywhere without ever going further, and these are the exits that weigh most. The men's draw loses two seeds in a few hours after already losing others in recent days, and whoever is left starts looking at the round of 16 with different eyes.

🇺🇸 Gauff gets past Badosa, Rybakina gives nothing away

Coco Gauff beat Paula Badosa 6-4, 7-6(5) opening the night session on the Arthur Ashe, while Elena Rybakina got past Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro 6-2, 6-4 on the Armstrong.

The second-set tie-break was the most useful passage of the evening, because Badosa had come back and Gauff had to close out a match that risked stretching. Rybakina meanwhile keeps winning matches in which almost nothing happens, which is usually the sign that she is serving well. Neither has yet met an opponent who forces her to play three sets.

🇫🇷 Monfils's last US Open ends against Tien

Learner Tien beat Gaël Monfils 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 on the Armstrong. It was the second round of the Frenchman's last US Open, against an opponent almost twenty years younger than him.

Tien won without dropping a set and without slowing down for the occasion, which was also the most correct way to play it. Monfils kept looking for the complicated point instead of the safe one until the last game, and anyone who has followed him for twenty years expected nothing different. Long careers almost always end like this, on a second-round evening nobody had marked in the calendar.

🇩🇪 Zverev wins in five again

Alexander Zverev beat Quentin Halys 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-7(3), 6-4 in the second round, again in five sets and again after more than four and a half hours. It is the top seed's second marathon in a row, after the almost five hours against Sonego on his debut.

Two matches, more than nine hours on court, and the tournament has not even reached the second week. He won the third-set tie-break and lost the fourth-set one, which tells you how finely balanced this was too. The draw has opened up around him, with Auger-Aliassime and de Minaur going out on the same night, but the bill for those hours is his to pay more than anyone else's.

WHAT HAPPENS TODAY:

Alcaraz vs Wu Yibing - Ashe, second match of the day, not before 19:00 Italian time. Third round for the defending champion, who against Faria lost the first set and then closed it out in four with no trouble from the wrist.
Sabalenka vs Rakhimova - Armstrong, from 17:00. The world number one has yet to drop a set in this tournament.
Medvedev vs Rinderknech - Grandstand. Rinderknech is the kind of opponent who lives on first serves, and Medvedev is the kind of opponent who sends them all back.
Shelton vs Shapovalov - Ashe, night session from 01:00 Italian time. Two heavy serves and few long rallies expected.
Venus and Serena Williams vs Chan/Joint - Ashe, night session. The sisters are back together in a Slam draw for the first time since 2022, with a wild card and two New York titles behind them.
Tsitsipas vs Lehecka - Grandstand, from 23:00 Italian time. No Italians on the main courts today: Darderi meets Sweeny again in the third round, and that will be the most direct way to understand what Musetti's match really was.