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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Casper Ruudvs
Juan Manuel Cerundolo
Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Round of 128
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Casper Ruud to advance · locked 2026-08-28 02:55 UTCPrediction
Ruud. The head-to-head says Cerúndolo leads 2–1, but read the fine print: both his wins came in Gstaad clay quarter-finals, and the one hard-court meeting — Toronto, just weeks ago — Ruud won 6-1 6-2 in barely an hour. That scoreline is the real preview. Ruud's game off this surface is heavy, safe and relentless; a 2022 finalist here, he owns 155 career tour-level hard-court wins to Cerúndolo's 16, and the Argentine lefty's loopy topspin sits up on a quick acrylic exactly the way Toronto suggested. Cerúndolo's season (23–19) is respectable and his clay craft is real, but this is the wrong month and the wrong borough for it.
The case for Casper Ruud
73% to winThe Toronto meeting is three weeks old and it was a 6-1 6-2 dismantling — the freshest possible evidence of how this matchup plays on hard. Ruud made the final here in 2022, his return game is built to blunt left-handed serving, and 25 wins this season have come the way his wins always come: without drama, from the baseline, in straight sets more often than not.
The case for Juan Manuel Cerundolo
27% to winHe has beaten Ruud twice, and the manner matters as much as the count: both times he out-problem-solved a top-tier baseliner over three sets. The lefty angles that won those matches don't vanish on a hard court, and Ruud's 2026 has been merely solid, not the top-five standard of his finalist years. A slow start from the Norwegian and the seed is in a live match.
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
Casper RuudJuan Manuel CerundoloPlayer 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
- The head-to-head splits by surface: Cerúndolo won Gstaad clay quarter-finals in 2025 and 2026, but Ruud took the only hard-court meeting — this month in Toronto, 6-1 6-2.
- Ruud's 2022 final here (lost to Alcaraz) remains the deepest US Open run by a Norwegian; he is one of three former US Open finalists in this year's men's field.
- Cerúndolo is one of the draw's left-handers, but his 16 career tour-level hard-court wins are a fraction of Ruud's 155.
Head to head
Cerúndolo leads 2–1 — but both wins came in Gstaad clay quarter-finals a year apart, and the lone hard-court meeting went to Ruud 6-1 6-2 in Toronto this month. On Sunday's surface the ledger reads 1–0 the other way.
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. Seeded players outside the top handful typically open on the Grandstand or the numbered field courts. (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, where a head-to-head can be true and misleading at once: Cerúndolo really has beaten Ruud twice, and Ruud really is the heavy favorite anyway — surface decides which fact matters. The 19th seed is defending nothing dramatic and chasing his first deep New York run since the 2022 final; the winner meets Svajda or Altmaier in the Round of 64, in a section that stays navigable deep into week one. Sixty-four men's openers, Sunday to Tuesday, $140,000 to every first-round loser.
