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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 128
Alexander Zverevvs
Lorenzo Sonego
Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Round of 128
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Alexander Zverev to advance · locked 2026-08-28 02:35 UTCPrediction
Zverev, and comfortably. He arrives as the top seed for the first time at a major — Jannik Sinner's knee took the world No. 1 out of the field — and, more to the point, he arrives as a Grand Slam champion at last, having broken through at Roland-Garros in June. The head-to-head is the cleanest argument on the page: six meetings, six Zverev wins, two of them in the last year. Sonego at 31 is having a lean season (12–15, with a losing career hard-court record), and his path to trouble here runs through a serve Zverev returns as well as anyone. A set could get away on a tiebreak; the match should not.
The case for Alexander Zverev
86.5% to winThe June breakthrough removed the one thing that ever weighed on him at majors. Zverev is 46–13 this season, a French Open champion, the No. 1 seed in Sinner's absence, and he has never lost to Sonego in six tries — including wins in each of the last three seasons. His return game against a serve-first opponent is exactly the style matchup he grinds down: make Sonego play a fifth ball, and the rallies tilt one way.
The case for Lorenzo Sonego
13.5% to winSonego's game travels on his serve and forehand, and he has taken sets off Zverev before — Halle went the distance twice, and he pushed a tiebreak as recently as last year. New York rewards his kind of first-strike tennis more than most venues, and a 12–15 season means he arrives with nothing to protect. If the serve lands at a high percentage and the first set steals away, the pressure of a first No. 1 seeding is Zverev's to carry, not his.
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
Alexander ZverevLorenzo SonegoPlayer 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
- Zverev is the No. 1 seed at a Grand Slam for the first time — a seeding opened up by Jannik Sinner's withdrawal with a right knee injury.
- This is Zverev's first US Open since winning Roland-Garros in June — his first major title after three lost finals, including the 2020 final here.
- The head-to-head is 6–0 Zverev, with wins on hard, grass and clay; Sonego has never beaten a reigning major champion at a Slam.
Head to head
Six meetings, six Zverev wins, spread across every surface — most recently Beijing last autumn (6-4 6-3). Sonego has made two of them close on grass at Halle, but he has never made one his.
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. As the top seed, Zverev's opener is a strong bet for Arthur Ashe or Louis Armstrong. (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
The Round of 128 is the widest the net ever gets: 64 men's matches across three days, every seed in action, every qualifier dreaming. This year's edition opens on a changed map — Jannik Sinner's knee has taken the world No. 1 out of the tournament, so Zverev, freshly a Roland-Garros champion, tops the draw for the first time, with defending champion Carlos Alcaraz seeded 2 on the other side. First-round losers leave with $140,000; the winner here gets a midweek date with Halys or Díaz Acosta in the Round of 64.
