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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Dane Sweeny vs Corentin Moutet — 7-6(4) 6-4 3-0 ret.
 Dane Sweeny✓ | 7 | 6 | 3 |
 Corentin Moutet | 64 | 4 | 0 |
def. by retirement
Final · Tuesday, September 1, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
Moutet served at 5-2 in the first set and never got closer to winning it. He tightened, was pegged back, lost the tiebreak, roared at himself after one hold, then opened the second set by netting a volley he barely bothered to chase. From there it was attrition: 32 winners to Sweeny's 16, but 48 unforced errors to 18, and 37% of his second-serve points won. At 0-3 down in the third he retired. No reason was made public — no medical timeout was reported and neither player spoke afterwards — though he had not played since pulling out of Cincinnati on 12 August with a left wrist he said he had been playing through since November, photographing it in a splint. Sweeny, a wild card who only got in when Alexei Popyrin moved up into the main draw, was making his US Open main-draw debut; a year ago he was ranked No. 408 and he is now No. 123. For Moutet it was a fourth first-round exit here in a row, his only run at Flushing Meadows still the fourth round of 2022.
Dane SweenyRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
Round of 128, the round built for matches like this: a wildcard's first Grand Slam main draw against a tour regular whose talent has always outrun his results. The winner walks into a Round of 64 against Fery or 13th-seeded Musetti, so the section offers a genuine path — no top-eight seed until the fourth round. Sixty-four men's first-rounders play out Sunday through Tuesday; the loser banks $140,000, and for a wildcard like Sweeny that check is the second-biggest of his career either way.
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.
Moutet. The Frenchman is ranked sixty places higher, has been to the second week here — a run to the fourth round in 2022 — and has never met Sweeny, which mostly means Sweeny has never had to solve the most awkward game style in the draw: the left-handed drop-shot-and-lob chaos Moutet manufactures on slow days and fast. Sweeny is a wildcard playing his first US Open main draw, and his 2026 (10–8) has been honest work at a level below this one. The caution flag on Moutet is temperament and a 8–18 season — he loses matches he controls. But class and craft over five sets should tell.
The case for Dane Sweeny
22% to winSweeny is the fresher and arguably hungrier player: a wildcard with a winning 2026 record while Moutet has lost eighteen times, and a grinder's baseline game that thrives on exactly the kind of pace Moutet declines to give. First Grand Slam main draws in New York have a way of lifting Australians — and nobody scouting reels tells you much about facing Moutet, which cuts both ways: Sweeny has no scar tissue against him either.
The case for Corentin Moutet
78% to winMoutet at his best is a top-30 talent with the widest shot vocabulary in the field, a proven fourth-round run at this very tournament, and a lefty's serve angles that first-timers read late. He has played 26 tour matches this year to Sweeny's 18 at all levels; the class gap between the tour and the challenger circuit is precisely what best-of-five exposes.
Both cases written 2026-08-28, 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: Corentin Moutet to advance ✗ WRONG
“Sixty ranking places, a proven fourth-round run on these courts, and a style first-timers historically read too late.”
Locked 2026-08-28 02:35 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Dane SweenyCorentin MoutetPlayer 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 2026-08-27.
Storylines
- Sweeny, a wildcard, is playing the first US Open main draw of his career at 25.
- Moutet reached the fourth round here in 2022 — still the deepest major run of his career, and the reason New York is the Slam where his ranking flatters least.
- These two have never met at tour level; first-time meetings decided the fate of more than a dozen first-rounders in this draw.
Head to head
A first career meeting. Sweeny's route has run through the Australian challenger circuit while Moutet has lived on the main tour, so there is no shared history to read — only the style clash of a straight-line grinder against the tour's most committed improviser.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-27.
Court & schedule: Court 7, Tuesday 1 September. 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.