US Open, the Italian draw is a funnel: five Italians in Zverev's quarter

Ten Italians in the men's main draw, seven direct entries and three from qualifying. The draw piled them up: seven sit in the top half and five in the first quarter alone, the one with Alexander Zverev and Alex de Minaur. Without Jannik Sinner, out with a right knee problem, the load falls on Flavio Cobolli, the fifth seed and the only Italian who enters his own quarter as a genuine contender.

The first quarter: five Italians on the same road

Lorenzo Sonego draws Zverev straight away. The German has never lost to him, and Sonego's usual route against big servers, stepping in on the second serve and stretching the rally, is the hardest one to take against this Zverev: the German won Roland Garros in June and starts here as the number 1 seed. Sonego is ranked 91 and arrives from Winston-Salem, where he lost 7-5, 6-3 to James Duckworth.

Lorenzo Musetti, the thirteenth seed, opens against Britain's Arthur Fery and risks the derby with Luciano Darderi in the third round. Zverev would be waiting in the fourth round. Musetti has two Slam quarterfinals on hard courts, both in the last twelve months: here in 2025 and in Melbourne in January. In Cincinnati he beat Altmaier, Zheng and Faria without dropping a set. The question mark is still the left thigh: he ended that Melbourne quarterfinal by retiring against Djokovic two sets up with a right iliopsoas problem, and in May the left rectus femoris injury he picked up in Rome against Ruud cost him Roland Garros and Wimbledon.

Darderi is the most contradictory case in the group. Five ATP titles, all on clay; in Montreal he reached his first Masters 1000 quarterfinal on hard courts by beating Nuno Borges 4-6, 6-3, 7-5; then, in Winston-Salem, he had his left knee treated in the derby with Bellucci and three days ago he lost 6-1, 6-0 in 68 minutes to Botic van de Zandschulp. He opens against a qualifier. In the possible derby, Musetti leads 3-0 and the last meeting was in Shanghai 2025, on hard.

De Minaur's section holds the two qualifiers. Andrea Guerrieri was ranked 512 at the start of the season and is 187 today: his first Slam main draw, at 27. Francesco Passaro, back in August after months out with a right wrist problem, is in the same part of the draw.

Cobolli: three rounds to settle in before a top ten

Cobolli has been world number 6 since 24 August. He starts with Francisco Comesaña, whom he already beat this year in three sets (7-5, 2-6, 6-3). In Cincinnati, to reach the semifinal, he had to go to a third set with Alexander Blockx, Rafael Jódar and Tommy Paul. The first top ten player on his path arrives in the fourth round and it is Taylor Fritz, against whom he has no previous meetings; Félix Auger-Aliassime would be waiting in the quarterfinals. For a player who builds on the return and the extended rally, three rounds to settle in before facing a top ten serve are exactly the right running order.

His summer also shows the limit. In Cincinnati he reached his first Masters 1000 semifinal and lost it in two sets to Arthur Fils: against someone who shortens the rally and takes time away from the return, there is still no plan B.

Mattia Bellucci is in the same quarter with the opposite arrangement: he opens against a qualifier, but the top of his section tightens much earlier than Cobolli's. In Cincinnati he had taken Jakub Mensik to a third set and gave it up in the deciding tie-break with a double fault at 5-5, after almost three hours. In Winston-Salem he won the first set against Darderi and lost the other two.

Bottom half: Berrettini and Arnaldi hit the wall immediately

Matteo Berrettini meets Stan Wawrinka again two months after their Wimbledon first round, four sets and four tie-breaks: 6-7(9), 7-6(16), 7-6(7), 7-6(5) in four hours and twenty minutes. On the Flushing hard courts that script, two players holding serve and settling everything over twelve points, is still the most likely one. The problem is the round after: Novak Djokovic or Mariano Navone, who already knocked Berrettini out in Montreal this summer. Berrettini has beaten Djokovic once in five meetings, in Doha in 2025.

Matteo Arnaldi, the thirtieth seed, opens with Duckworth, the Australian who just stopped Sonego in Winston-Salem, and on projection meets Carlos Alcaraz in the third round. It is the same crossing as 2023, when Arnaldi reached the fourth round here and Alcaraz closed him out 6-3, 6-3, 6-4. The Spaniard returns after four and a half months out with a right wrist problem: in the first two rounds he will lack match rhythm, by the third he has usually found it again.

Federico Cinà came through qualifying by beating Bu Yunchaokete 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 and opens against Alex Michelsen in Djokovic's section.

Prediction: two Italians in the fourth round, Cobolli and Musetti. Cobolli has the best draw of the group, three warm-up rounds and a quarter without Zverev or Alcaraz; Sonego the worst, the number 1 seed in the first round. The condition that overturns all of it is Musetti's leg: if he arrives at the derby with Darderi having already spent two long matches, that third round becomes a coin toss and the count drops to one. In the early rounds the number to watch is not the score, it is the duration.