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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Andrey Rublevvs
Marin Cilic
Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Round of 128
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My pick: Andrey Rublev to advance · locked 2026-08-28 03:40 UTCPrediction
Rublev, against one of the few men in the draw who has actually held this trophy. Cilic at 37 is the 2014 champion and the owner of a 3–4 head-to-head that includes wins over Rublev at two majors — but the newest of those seven meetings is four years old, and the 2026 versions of these players are not the 2022 ones. Rublev arrives seeded 23rd with a 27–16 season and 289 career hard-court wins that are still accumulating; Cilic arrives at 14–16 with a serve that keeps him in sets and a body that has to be managed between them. The Croatian's flat first-strike game remains the archetype that bothers Rublev's rhythm. Over three sets I would hesitate; over five, the 28-year-old's engine settles it. Rublev in four.
The case for Andrey Rublev
69% to winRublev leads every current-tense category: seeding, season record, ranking, fitness, and 289 hard-court wins still climbing. The head-to-head's Cilic entries are all pre-2023; the tour Rublev has since beaten is stronger than the one Cilic left. A quarter-finalist here in 2023, he knows the assignment — survive the serve, punish everything else.
The case for Marin Cilic
31% to winCilic has beaten Rublev in a Grand Slam five-setter and a Slam four-setter, and the blueprint hasn't changed: serve big, flatten the forehand early, refuse the long exchange. He is one of four former US Open champions packed into the bottom half, and the 2014 fortnight — a title nobody saw coming — is the permanent case against underestimating him.
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
Player 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
- Cilic's 2014 title makes him one of the few former US Open champions in this year's men's field — twelve years on, he opens against a seed.
- The head-to-head runs 4–3 to Rublev, but Cilic won two of the biggest meetings — the 2022 Australian Open and the 2022 Roland-Garros quarter-final, in five.
- Rublev played Fan Week's mixed doubles here two weeks ago; his singles opener is his 2023 quarter-final's echo — that remains his best US Open.
Head to head
Rublev leads 4–3, with all four of his wins on hard courts — but Cilic took the two meetings that mattered most, at the 2022 Australian Open and Roland-Garros, the latter in a fifth-set tiebreak. They have not played since.
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. A former champion against a seed reads like an Armstrong feature. (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 a 2014 flashback in it: Cilic, the champion nobody saw coming that September, opens his latest — perhaps last — New York campaign against a seed he has genuinely troubled. Seven career meetings say this pairing produces tight sets; the twelve intervening years say Rublev finishes them now. The winner gets Mérida or Fucsovics in a Round of 64 that suddenly looks like the section's soft landing. Men's first-round play runs Sunday through Tuesday.
