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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 64
Taylor Fritz vs Mattia Bellucci — 6-0 6-1 6-1
 Taylor Fritz✓ | 6 | 6 | 6 |
 Mattia Bellucci | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Final · Thursday, September 3, 2026 · Round of 64
Result
Two games in ninety-eight minutes: the fewest Fritz has ever conceded in a Grand Slam match. He took the first set on Arthur Ashe in 35 minutes without dropping a game, held all ten of his service games, broke eight times from fifteen chances and won 46 of the 78 points Bellucci served. Bellucci, the world No. 95, got on the board with an ace early in the second set and finished with nine winners against 21 unforced errors, winning 29% of his second-serve points. The two had met once before, in the Stuttgart quarter-finals in June, where Fritz needed three tight sets on grass; he said afterwards that grass makes Bellucci's serve too good to attack and that these conditions suited him far better. Asked to rank the performance he declined to call it the best match ever played but said he had known from the first game that things were clicking, and that he could not nitpick it. He also made the point that not spending energy early matters: a day off, he said, is not enough to recover from a five-setter. Francisco Cerundolo is next.
Taylor FritzRows 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.
Taylor Fritz✓Mattia BellucciRound of 128
Round of 64
What we know now
Court: Arthur Ashe Stadium
Match length: 1:38
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.
Fritz, but their one meeting is a warning against assuming much more than that. It was a Stuttgart quarter-final on grass in June and it finished 5-7 7-5 7-5 — three sets in which the loser of each was one break down, and Fritz needed the last of them. Tuesday flattered neither man's opponent: Fritz beat a wild-card teenager without losing serve, fourteen aces to one, and Bellucci beat a qualifier who was already labouring, 6-4 6-2 6-0 after nearly four hours of rain. The gap in the rankings is 85 places and the gap on hard courts is wider than that — Fritz is 272-164 for his career on the surface and a US Open finalist two years ago, on a court he has been the best American on for half a decade. Bellucci is a left-hander who is 15-19 this season and has never been past the second round here. The serve is the whole match: Fritz landed 74% of his first deliveries and won 91% of them on Tuesday, and Bellucci will not get many looks.
The case for Taylor Fritz
79% to winFritz is the 2024 runner-up here, ranked No. 10, 31-16 on the season, and did not face a break point worth the name on Tuesday — the only two he saw all match he erased with an ace and a backhand. His career hard-court record is 272-164. He beat Bellucci in their only meeting, and he beat Rafael Jodar in the Washington final earlier this summer. On this surface, at this venue, he is the safest bet in the section.
The case for Mattia Bellucci
21% to winBellucci took a set off Fritz on grass and led it, and left-handers are the one shape that has troubled Fritz's return over the years. He is fresher in the sense that matters least and staler in the sense that matters most — 15-19 for the year — but he dropped four games in the last two sets on Tuesday and hit 33 winners to 15. At No. 95 he has nothing to protect. If the serve that produced fourteen aces against Piros travels, the match becomes about who blinks in a tiebreak.
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: Taylor Fritz to advance ✓ RIGHT
“The serve, the surface and the head-to-head — with the caveat that the head-to-head went to three tight sets.”
Locked 2026-09-01 22:35 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Taylor FritzMattia BellucciPlayer 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
- Their only meeting was a Stuttgart quarter-final on grass in June 2026, which Fritz won 5-7 7-5 7-5.
- Fritz beat the 18-year-old wild card Darwin Blanch 6-3 6-2 6-4 without dropping serve, hitting fourteen aces to one.
- Bellucci beat the qualifier Zsombor Piros 6-4 6-2 6-0 after Court 10 had waited close to four hours for the rain to clear.
- Fritz reached the final here in 2024, losing to Jannik Sinner, who is absent this year.
- Bellucci is a left-hander ranked No. 95 whose best US Open run is the second round in 2025.
Head to head
One meeting, in the Stuttgart quarter-finals on grass in June 2026: Fritz won 5-7 7-5 7-5. They have never met on a hard court.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
Court & schedule: Arthur Ashe Stadium, 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.