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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Martin Landaluce vs Jacob Fearnley — 4-6 6-2 4-6 7-5 6-3
 Jacob Fearnley✓ | 4 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 6 |
 Martin Landaluce | 6 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 3 |
Final · Monday, August 31, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
Landaluce served for the match twice and never held again. Two breaks had put him 5-2 up in the fourth set of a match that began on Sunday, was suspended by rain at 4-3 and 40-0 in the first, and resumed on Court 12 on Monday; from there he lost sixteen of the next twenty points, Fearnley took five games in a row for 7-5, and the fifth went 5-1 before a missed smash on the first match point delayed it a game. Four hours and eleven minutes. Fearnley, in the draw as a lucky loser after losing the last round of qualifying and Ugo Humbert withdrawing, converted nine of sixteen break points, hit 45 winners and won 164 points to 142 — and served sixteen double faults to Landaluce's thirteen. Landaluce, 20, the 2022 boys' champion here, hit sixteen aces against sixty-eight unforced errors. Spanish reporting is explicit that he showed no physical problem in the collapse.
Martin LandaluceRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
The Round of 128 is the widest the net ever gets: 64 matches a draw, spread across three days, every seed in action and every qualifier playing the biggest match of the year. This half of the bracket filled in late — qualifying ran a day long after rain pushed the last round to Friday, so these names were still blank slots on draw night. First-round losers leave with $140,000. The winner draws Etcheverry or Kopřiva in the Round of 64.
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.
The tightest match on the men's first-round board by hard-court Elo: 1663.0 against 1664.4, a gap of 1.4 points. Landaluce is 20, ranked 65th and 19–18 on the season, playing his first US Open main draw; Fearnley is 25, in as a lucky loser at 100th, 8–11 with a second round here last year. Fearnley has the venue experience and the extra match play from qualifying; Landaluce has the better season and the higher ranking. There is no honest way to call this one — Fearnley by a hair, on the grounds that a lucky loser has already found his range on these courts.
The case for Martin Landaluce
48% to winLandaluce is 35 places higher in the world, 19–18 against 8–11, and at 20 the trajectory is all his. He has not spent the week grinding qualifying, so he arrives fresh into a match that could go five.
The case for Jacob Fearnley
52% to winFearnley has played on these courts this week and reached the second round here in 2025, which is one round more than Landaluce's zero. A lucky loser is a player who has already proved he belongs and then been given the reprieve — historically a dangerous first-round draw.
Both cases written 2026-08-29, 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: Jacob Fearnley to advance ✓ RIGHT
“Level on every rating, so the tiebreak is court time this week and a second round here last year.”
Locked 2026-08-29 01:40 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Martin LandaluceJacob FearnleyPlayer 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 2026-08-28.
Storylines
- A 1.4-point hard-court Elo gap — the closest matchup in the men's first round.
- Fearnley is in as a lucky loser after losing in the final round of qualifying.
- Landaluce, 20, is playing his first US Open main-draw match.
Head to head
They have never met. Their hard-court Elo ratings are 1.4 points apart.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-28.
Court & schedule: Court 12, 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 2026-08-30)
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.