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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 64
Francisco Cerundolo vs 
Jan-Lennard Struff
Round of 64
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Francisco Cerundolo to advance · locked 2026-09-01 23:05 UTCPrediction
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.
Tale of the tape
Francisco CerundoloJan-Lennard StruffPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-08-28.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
The briefing
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.
Watch: Second-round coverage runs across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, with ESPN Deportes in Spanish — and every court streams in the ESPN app, which is where a match away from the two show courts will live. (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, and this match has not reached the board yet. (Official US Open order-of-play release cadence, as of 2026-09-01)
Weather: Tonight is the last of the wet weather and the worst of it: showers and thunderstorms at 84% before the sky clears to mostly cloudy on a low near 71°F. Wednesday is the break the tournament has been waiting for — near 75°F on an 18% chance of a shower — though storms creep back after dark at 65%. Thursday is the unsettled one, warm at 81°F with showers and thunderstorms likely at 65% and 53% overnight. Friday turns: near 82°F and mostly sunny on 10%, the first clean day of the fortnight, with Saturday better still. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-01)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
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.
Round of 128
Round of 32