US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Valentin Vacherot vs Aleksandar Kovacevic — 6-2 6-3 7-5
 Valentin Vacherot✓ | 6 | 6 | 7 |
 Aleksandar Kovacevic | 2 | 3 | 5 |
Final · Monday, August 31, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
Kovacevic did not earn a single break point. Vacherot held all fifteen of his service games, won 90% of the points behind his first serve, hit fourteen aces to eight and kept his unforced errors to 21 against Kovacevic's 38 — 96 points to 69 in 1 hour 54 minutes on Court 11. Only the third set stayed close, and it went 7-5. For the 22nd seed it was a first win at the US Open in his career, and a first win of any kind since July after four straight defeats.
Valentin VacherotRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
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.
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.
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 — opinions with a percent sign on. They add to 100 because tennis has no draw to hide the rounding in.
My locked pick: Valentin Vacherot to advance ✓ RIGHT
“The 29–16 hard-court season behind the seeding — a clay qualifying loss from 2024 is trivia against that.”
Locked 2026-08-28 03:15 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Valentin VacherotAleksandar KovacevicPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-08-28.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level, incl. tour-event qualifying) · as of 2026-08-27.
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.
Court & schedule: Court 11, 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.