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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 64
Francisco Cerundolo vs Jan-Lennard Struff — 5-7 7-5 4-6 6-2 6-3
 Francisco Cerundolo✓ | 5 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 6 |
 Jan-Lennard Struff | 7 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 3 |
Final · Thursday, September 3, 2026 · Round of 64
Result
Twenty-nine double faults between them, four of them in the single game in which Jan-Lennard Struff served for the third set — he was broken. Francisco Cerundolo lost the set anyway, broken serving at 4-5 and losing it on a double fault of his own, after which he smashed his racquet six times into the court. It looked like the turn of the match and it was the opposite of it. Struff, 36 and ranked 44, called the physio at 0-3 in the fourth to have his taped right foot unwrapped and take a painkiller; Cerundolo took that set 6-2, broke at 3-3 in the fifth and finished on a forehand pass down the line as Struff came in behind a second serve. Three hours and fifty-four minutes on Court 5. Struff approached the net sixty-six times and won forty-four of them, which is how he stayed in it; Cerundolo won 55% of his second-serve points to Struff's 44%, and 166 points to 155. He is 28, Argentina's highest-ranked man, and had never been past the second round in four previous US Opens. Struff made the fourth round here last year and the Wimbledon quarter-finals in July, the best Grand Slam result of his career.
Francisco CerundoloRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
The Round of 64 is where a Grand Slam draw stops being a lottery and becomes a tournament. Sixty-four men's matches opened the bracket; thirty-two across Wednesday and Thursday halve what is left, and everyone still here has already won on these courts. Seeds who came through the first round now meet opponents carrying form rather than a ranking.
Francisco Cerundolo✓Jan-Lennard StruffRound of 128
Round of 64
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.
Cerundolo, but by less than the seeding suggests, and the one meeting between them is misleading rather than decisive. Cerundolo won it 6-0 6-2 — on clay, in Munich, in April 2025, which is his surface and about as far from Struff's as the calendar allows. On hard courts the two are almost indistinguishable by record: Cerundolo is 65-64 for his career, Struff 175-187, and neither has done much on this one — Cerundolo has never been past the second round in New York, Struff reached the fourth last year. Tuesday split them the other way. Struff hit fifteen aces, won every point behind his first serve in the opening set and was gone in under two hours; Cerundolo needed nearly two and a half against a man returning from six months out, landed 51% of his first serves and double-faulted ten times. The 24th seed is the better player over a season. Over three or four sets against a 36-year-old serving like that, it is close.
The case for Francisco Cerundolo
53% to winCerundolo is the seed, ranked nineteen places higher, and has beaten Struff before without conceding a game in the first set. He won Queen's this year and the Argentina Open, and at 28 he is eight years younger over what could be a four-set match in humidity. His first round was scrappy but it was also his first win of the North American hard-court swing, which is the sort of match a player needs to get out of the way.
The case for Jan-Lennard Struff
47% to winStruff has the bigger weapon and the better record at this tournament: fourth round here in 2025, quarter-finals at Wimbledon this summer, and a first serve that produced fifteen aces and a set without a single point lost behind it on Tuesday. At 36 he is ranked 44th and has nothing to lose, and he had extra motivation handed to him that morning — Germany left him out of its Davis Cup squad, and the captain who did it watched him win from the stands.
Both cases written 2026-09-01, 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: Francisco Cerundolo to advance ✓ RIGHT
“The seed, the age gap and the head-to-head — but the head-to-head was on clay and Struff's serve is the better weapon on this surface.”
Locked 2026-09-01 23:05 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Francisco CerundoloJan-Lennard StruffPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-02.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
Storylines
- One previous meeting: Cerundolo won 6-0 6-2 in the Munich second round on clay in April 2025.
- Struff beat Camilo Ugo Carabelli 6-4 6-3 6-3, hitting fifteen aces to seven and winning every point behind his first serve in the opening set.
- Struff learned on the morning of that match that Germany had left him out of its Davis Cup squad for the Croatia tie.
- Cerundolo beat Filip Misolic 6-4 6-3 7-5 in his first win of the North American hard-court swing, landing 51% of his first serves and double-faulting ten times.
- Struff reached the fourth round here in 2025 and the Wimbledon quarter-finals this summer; Cerundolo has never been past the second round at Flushing Meadows.
Head to head
One meeting, in the Munich second round on clay in April 2025: Cerundolo won 6-0 6-2. They have never met on a hard court.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
Court & schedule: Court 5, Thursday 3 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 2026-09-02)
Weather: Sunday — the men's final, and the last match of the fortnight — is 78°F with showers and thunderstorms 95% likely, the wettest day of the two weeks and the one day that cannot be pushed back. Ashe closes its roof and plays on. It clears overnight: 20% Sunday night, 20% Monday, then dry and sunny from Tuesday. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-13)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.