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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Adolfo Daniel Vallejo vs Gael Monfils — 2-6 6-1 6-2 6-0
 Gael Monfils✓ | 2 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
 Adolfo Daniel Vallejo | 6 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
Final · Tuesday, September 1, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
Gael Monfils turned 40 that morning and lost the first set 6-2. He then won eighteen of the next twenty-one games. Adolfo Daniel Vallejo — 22, ranked 60th, Paraguay's best player and in a Slam main draw on his own ranking for the first time — took one more game in the second set, two in the third and none in the fourth, on a night when Monfils converted seven of nineteen break points and bowed to the Armstrong crowd after hitting a leaping cross-court forehand in mid-air. It was his 34th US Open main-draw win, a French record here, and his 200th Grand Slam match. Only two men over 40 had won a men's singles match at this tournament in the previous fifty years: Ken Rosewall in 1977, and Jimmy Connors on his own 40th birthday, 2 September 1992. Monfils retires at the end of the season and had called this one "the last one" on media day; the crowd sang Happy Birthday during his on-court interview. "Beating a young lad of 22, and comfortably — that's cool," he said.
Adolfo Daniel VallejoRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
Round of 128, and the start of a goodbye: Monfils's wildcard makes this his final scheduled US Open, twenty years after his first. The bracket is incidental to the occasion — though the winner does get Borges or 14th-seeded Tien next, in an eighth suddenly missing its biggest name. Every Monfils match from here is potentially the last one, which is exactly the energy that has always made him appointment viewing in this borough. Play runs Sunday through Tuesday.
What we know now
Court: Louis Armstrong Stadium
Match length: 2:22
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
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.
Monfils — sentiment and sample size agreeing for once. At 39, ranked No. 307, playing on a wildcard in what he has framed as his farewell season, the Frenchman still owns nearly 400 career hard-court wins and a 2016 semi-final on these courts; Vallejo, a 22-year-old Paraguayan making his US Open debut, has six. The young man's season (17–14) is honest and his ball-striking real, but Monfils in New York under lights remains one of the sport's reliable chemistry experiments — the crowd gives him legs that the calendar says he shouldn't have. Best-of-five at 39 is the honest risk in this pick: if it goes five, flip it. Through four, the showman.
The case for Adolfo Daniel Vallejo
30% to winVallejo is the fresher athlete by seventeen years, arrives with a winning season, and faces a 4–9 opponent whose ranking has fallen to No. 307 — on paper this is his match. Farewell tours run on emotion, and emotion is expensive: every long rally he extends drains the one resource Monfils cannot replace. Make it physical, make it long, and the math of age does the rest.
The case for Gael Monfils
70% to winMonfils has spent two decades turning Flushing Meadows into his personal stage — a 2016 semi-final, countless five-set nights, and a highlight reel no active player matches. The wildcard is a thank-you, but the 396 career hard-court wins are a warning: his floor on this surface, even at 39, has beaten better players than Vallejo. New York will be loudly on his side.
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: Gael Monfils to advance ✓ RIGHT
“Four hundred hard-court wins and the loudest crowd in tennis behind him — the farewell has at least one more night in it.”
Locked 2026-08-28 02:55 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Adolfo Daniel VallejoGael MonfilsPlayer 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
- Monfils, 39, is playing the US Open on a wildcard in his farewell season — two weeks after he and his wife Elina Svitolina both featured in Fan Week's mixed doubles.
- Vallejo, 22, is making his US Open main-draw debut with a winning 2026 season behind him — and only six tour-level hard-court matches on his card.
- The age gap — 17 years — is the largest in any men's first-round match this year, and their careers have never crossed.
Head to head
Never met — when Monfils reached his US Open semi-final in 2016, Vallejo was twelve. The generation gap is the matchup.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-27.
Court & schedule: Louis Armstrong Stadium, Tuesday 1 September in the night session. 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.