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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Valentin Vacherotvs
Aleksandar Kovacevic
Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Round of 128
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Valentin Vacherot to advance · locked 2026-08-28 03:15 UTCPrediction
Vacherot, with a home-crowd asterisk. The Monégasque is the 22nd seed with a hard-court record (29–16) that outperforms his overall season, and this — remarkably, at 27 — is his first US Open main draw. Kovacevic is the local: a New Yorker ranked No. 89 whose 18–25 season undersells how well his flat ball-striking plays in this building, and who beat Vacherot the only time they shared a court, in Madrid qualifying two years ago. That was clay and another lifetime in both careers. The seed's serve-plus-forehand pattern is the sturdier construction, and Kovacevic's season-long struggle to close tight sets is the sort of habit a debutant seed gratefully accepts. Vacherot in four, with at least one tiebreak going the crowd's way.
The case for Valentin Vacherot
68% to winVacherot's 29–16 hard-court card is top-20 quality, his seeding is earned on this exact surface, and his game has no dependence on the crowd's approval — a useful trait when the crowd belongs to the other guy. The Madrid loss came in qualifying on clay in 2024; nothing about it transfers. Seeds with fresh momentum beat home hopefuls far more often than New York remembers.
The case for Aleksandar Kovacevic
32% to winKovacevic is at home in the loudest sense, he owns the only head-to-head result, and his seasons always look worse than his level because he plays everyone. A first-Slam-as-a-seed debut is a strange pressure Vacherot has never carried; a Queens crowd roaring for the local on every break point is exactly how strange pressure becomes lost sets.
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
Valentin VacherotAleksandar KovacevicPlayer 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, incl. tour-event qualifying) · as of 2026-08-27.
The briefing
Storylines
- Vacherot, 27, is playing his first US Open main draw — as a seed, off a 29–16 hard-court season.
- Kovacevic, the New Yorker, gets the home opener every local player asks the draw gods for: a seed on a show-adjacent court.
- Their only meeting was in Madrid qualifying in 2024, on clay — Kovacevic won it, and it is the head-to-head's only entry.
Head to head
Kovacevic leads 1–0, but the sample is as thin as samples get: a 6-4 6-2 win in Madrid QUALIFYING, on clay, in 2024. It predates Vacherot's rise entirely; treat it as trivia, not form.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level, incl. tour-event qualifying) · 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 New Yorker against a seed is the sort of pairing the schedulers like on the Grandstand. (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, and one of the draw's stranger sentences is true: the 22nd seed is a US Open debutant. Vacherot's late-blooming season has him seeded at a major he has never entered, and the tournament greeted him with a New Yorker. Kovacevic's home opener is the kind of match this round exists for — a seed with everything to prove against a local with nothing to fear. The winner meets Majchrzak or Medjedović in the Round of 64. Sunday through Tuesday, sun mostly promised.
