US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Damir Dzumhurvs
Hubert Hurkacz
Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Round of 128
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Hubert Hurkacz to advance · locked 2026-08-28 04:05 UTCPrediction
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, quoted to a decimal because false precision is funnier — and tennis has no draw to hide the rounding in.
Tale of the tape
Damir DzumhurHubert HurkaczPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-08-27.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level, incl. Davis Cup) · as of 2026-08-27.
The briefing
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.
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 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.
