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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Jan Choinskivs
Botic van de Zandschulp
Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Round of 128
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Botic van de Zandschulp to advance · locked 2026-08-28 02:55 UTCPrediction
Van de Zandschulp. The résumés at this tournament are not close: the Dutchman was a quarter-finalist here in 2021 — still the round-for-round best of his career — and his 115 tour-level hard-court wins are more than ten times Choinski's nine. The Brit's 2026 (10–16) has been a struggle for traction at tour level, and his game, big serve aside, gives van de Zandschulp the rally shapes he grinds down. The Dutchman's own season has wobbled between sharp and flat, which is why this projects long rather than clean — a tiebreak or two feels booked. Never met; the fundamentals still point one way.
The case for Jan Choinski
29% to winChoinski's serve is genuinely big, and at 30 he is playing his home-away-from-home major — German-born, British-flagged, New York-neutral. Van de Zandschulp's season has run hot and cold, and a server who keeps sets tight to 5-5 turns any opponent's cold patch into a lost set. Nobody in this section would be surprised by four tight sets.
The case for Botic van de Zandschulp
71% to winThe 2021 quarter-final run here was no fluke — van de Zandschulp beat top-tier opposition to do it, and his flat, early drives remain the cleanest counterpunching in this part of the draw. He is 21–19 on the season against tour fields while Choinski is 10–16, and the return-of-serve gap between them is the widest single-skill gap in the match.
Both cases written 2026-08-28, before the first ball — frozen into the record exactly as written, whatever the result. The percentages are mine, quoted to a decimal because false precision is funnier — and tennis has no draw to hide the rounding in.
Tale of the tape
Jan ChoinskiBotic van de ZandschulpPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-08-27.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-27.
The briefing
Storylines
- Van de Zandschulp's 2021 quarter-final remains the best US Open by a Dutch man in the Open Era — this tournament is where his career peaked, and he has never missed it since.
- Choinski's nine career tour-level hard-court wins make this the most experience-lopsided matchup by surface in the men's first round.
- First meeting: two 30-year-olds, born four months apart, whose careers have never crossed at tour level.
Head to head
Never met at tour level — a rarity for two European 30-year-olds, explained by Choinski's late arrival to this level. No shared opponents' folklore to lean on; the serve-versus-return battle will write the first chapter itself.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-27.
Watch: Opening-round coverage starts Sunday at 11 a.m. ET across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, with ESPN Deportes in Spanish — and every court streams in the ESPN app, including a whip-around channel for the early rounds. (ESPN press-room release and listings, as of 2026-08-27)
Court & schedule: Not yet assigned — the US Open posts each day's order of play the evening before, so day-one courts land the night of 29 August. This one profiles as a field-court match. (US Open order-of-play release cadence, as of 2026-08-27)
Weather: The opening window looks kind: mostly sunny and 85–86°F Sunday and Monday, with thunderstorm chances only creeping in on Tuesday. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs if the sky turns; the field courts wait it out. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-08-27)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
At this Stage
Round of 128 housekeeping with a twist: the winner is very likely to run into third-seeded Félix Auger-Aliassime in the Round of 64 — the price of living in a top seed's neighborhood. That makes Sunday's match the tour's oldest trade: win now, get flattened later, cash the points either way. Van de Zandschulp knows the arithmetic better than most; his best tennis has come at exactly this tournament. Men's first-round play runs Sunday through Tuesday under a mostly sunny forecast.
Jan ChoinskiBotic van de ZandschulpRound of 128
Jan ChoinskiBotic van de ZandschulpRound of 64