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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Jan Choinski vs Botic van de Zandschulp — 6-3 6-1 7-6(5)
 Botic van de Zandschulp✓ | 6 | 6 | 7 |
 Jan Choinski | 3 | 1 | 65 |
Final · Wednesday, September 2, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
Botic van de Zandschulp did not get on court at all on Tuesday, and when the backlog cleared he needed 1hr 59min on Court 5. He was slow to settle against Choinski's serve — the Briton hit eight aces — and had to save two break points at 2-3 before winning five games in a row for the set, then running through the second 6-1. Choinski had nothing in the rallies, where van de Zandschulp out-hit him 38 winners to 17, and by the third set was leaning wholly on his delivery. He forced the tiebreak and led it 4-1, then lost six of the last seven points. Van de Zandschulp was never broken all afternoon: two break points faced, both saved, 88 percent of first-serve points won and 16 aces. It is his fifth second round in six US Opens — he was a quarter-finalist in 2021 — and his second win over Choinski, after a 6-1, 6-0 dismissal at a Braunschweig Challenger last July. Alex de Minaur is next.
Jan ChoinskiRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
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.
What we know now
What I said beforehand
The preview, frozen before the first serve. Clearly dated, never rewritten — that's the deal that makes the pick worth anything.
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 — opinions with a percent sign on. They add to 100 because tennis has no draw to hide the rounding in.
My locked pick: Botic van de Zandschulp to advance ✓ RIGHT
“A US Open quarter-finalist's pedigree and a tenfold hard-court experience edge over a struggling debutant-level season.”
Locked 2026-08-28 02:55 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
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 2026-08-28.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-27.
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.
Court & schedule: Court 5, Wednesday 2 September. The US Open posts each day's order of play the evening before; this one is on the board. (Official US Open order of play, as of 2026-09-02)
Weather: Sunday — the men's final, and the last match of the fortnight — was forecast at 78°F with showers and thunderstorms 95% likely, the wettest day of the two weeks and the one day that could not be pushed back. The rain came in the morning and stopped before the final, which Ashe played with its roof open. It cleared from there: 15% overnight, 15% Monday, then dry and sunny. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-13)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.