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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Damir Dzumhur vs Hubert Hurkacz — 6-4 4-6 6-1 6-1
 Hubert Hurkacz✓ | 6 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
 Damir Dzumhur | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 |
Final · Monday, August 31, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
The last time these two met, Hurkacz was an emerging teenager and Dzumhur beat him in three straight sets in a 2017 Davis Cup tie in Zenica. Nine years later Dzumhur broke twice for a 4-1 lead here and looked like doing it again — and then Hurkacz won five games in a row for the set. He lost the second anyway, went off between sets and came back a different player: broken serves in the second and fourth games, 5-0, and the third set gone in seven games. In the fourth Polish reporting had Dzumhur troubled by pain in his right hip from the third game; he called for medical attention, returned quickly and won one more game. Hurkacz served fourteen aces to none, converted ten of sixteen break points and hit 47 winners in 2 hours 40 minutes. Dzumhur, ranked 104th, won 51% of the points behind his own first serve.
Damir DzumhurRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
Round of 128 in Ben Shelton's shadow: the winner of this one meets the eighth seed or Griekspoor in the Round of 64, which frames the whole exercise. Hurkacz opens yet another attempt to make this tournament like him — no Slam has resisted his serve so stubbornly — while Dzumhur, nine years after his only US Open second week, plays the kind of low-stakes, high-craft opener he has spent a career winning ugly. Sunday through Tuesday; $140,000 to the loser.
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.
Hurkacz. The Pole's 16–16 season is the sound of a big game still re-tuning itself, but the machinery — a top-five-grade serve and a 173–117 career hard-court record — operates a full class above Dzumhur's. The Bosnian at 34 is a wonderful anachronism, a counterpuncher who beat Hurkacz once in a 2017 Davis Cup tie, and his return skills will make the tiebreaks honest. What he cannot do at this stage of his career is create cheap points, and against Hurkacz's serve a returner needs more than honesty. Hurkacz's US Open history (never past the second round — a genuine oddity for a player of his level) is the only wobble worth pricing in. Hurkacz in four.
The case for Damir Dzumhur
25% to winDzumhur beat Hurkacz the only time they played — three straight tiebreak-tight sets in Davis Cup — and New York's slower evening conditions reward his retrieving more than any other quick court. Hurkacz has never solved this tournament: a 2R ceiling across his whole career is not variance, it is a pattern, and patterns are an underdog's best friend.
The case for Hubert Hurkacz
75% to winHurkacz's serve is among the two or three best in the field, his hard-court pedigree includes years inside the top ten, and the 2017 loss came when he was a 20-year-old rookie on the road. Nine years and 150 hard-court wins later, the gap between these two has widened in every category that decides fast-court tennis.
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: Hubert Hurkacz to advance ✓ RIGHT
“A top-tier serve and 173 hard-court wins against a 34-year-old counterpuncher — the 2017 Davis Cup result is a memory, not a form line.”
Locked 2026-08-28 04:05 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Damir DzumhurHubert HurkaczPlayer 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, incl. Davis Cup) · as of 2026-08-27.
Storylines
- Hurkacz has never passed the US Open second round — the strangest hole in an otherwise elite hard-court résumé.
- Dzumhur won their only meeting, a 2017 Davis Cup rubber, 7-6(1) 7-5 7-5 — Hurkacz was 20 and unranked-adjacent; both men are different players now.
- At 34, Dzumhur is chasing his first US Open second week since his 2017 third round.
Head to head
Dzumhur leads 1–0 from a 2017 Davis Cup rubber in three tight sets — a result from another era of both careers, when Hurkacz was a 20-year-old playing for Poland's team survival.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level, incl. Davis Cup) · as of 2026-08-27.
Court & schedule: Court 4, Monday 31 August. 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 2026-08-31)
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.