US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Jaime Fariavs
Jenson Brooksby
Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Round of 128
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Jaime Faria to advance · locked 2026-08-28 04:35 UTCPrediction
Faria — the freshest evidence says so twice. The Portuguese 23-year-old beat Brooksby 6-3 6-2 in Cincinnati three weeks ago, squaring a head-to-head Brooksby had led since Roland-Garros last year, and his 27–12 season is the sort of year that turns a No. 70 ranking into a passing phase. Brooksby remains the tour's strangest puzzle — a 2021 fourth round here, hands and angles nobody teaches, and a 12–20 season that keeps hinting the solution has been lost. On a quick court the American's junk-and-redirect game needs more time than Faria's first-strike pace intends to offer. If Brooksby's disruption lands early this becomes a thinking match; more likely, Cincinnati repeats at greater length. Faria in four.
The case for Jaime Faria
56% to winFaria won the last meeting emphatically, three weeks ago, on this exact surface — and his 27–12 season towers over Brooksby's 12–20. At 23 he is the improving party with the cleaner power game, and New York's pace rewards his serve-plus-first-ball pattern more than any stop on the summer swing.
The case for Jenson Brooksby
44% to winBrooksby has been to the second week of this tournament and owns the higher tennis IQ in the match by a distance; his win in the 2025 Roland-Garros meeting showed what happens when he gets a full best-of-five canvas. Cincinnati was best-of-three and over in an hour — the longer format is precisely where his pattern-breaking compounds.
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
Jaime FariaJenson BrooksbyPlayer 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
- This is an immediate rematch: Faria won 6-3 6-2 in Cincinnati's first round three weeks ago, squaring the head-to-head at 1–1.
- Brooksby's 2021 fourth round here — at 20, with wins over seeded opposition — remains his career peak; his 2026 record is 12–20.
- Faria's 27–12 season is the best of any Portuguese man in the field — he and Nuno Borges give Portugal two live first-rounders.
Head to head
One–one: Brooksby in four sets at Roland-Garros 2025, Faria 6-3 6-2 in Cincinnati this month. Different surfaces, different formats — the rubber match lands on Brooksby's home soil but Faria's preferred pace.
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 with the draw's most consequential neighbor: the winner of this rematch almost certainly opens the Round of 64 against defending champion Carlos Alcaraz. That turns a scrappy unseeded first-rounder into an audition — Faria's power or Brooksby's puzzles, one of them gets the Ashe assignment every player publicly wants and privately fears. Cincinnati says Faria; best-of-five says watch the first hour. Sunday through Tuesday.
