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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 64
Taylor Fritz vs 
Mattia Bellucci
Round of 64
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Taylor Fritz to advance · locked 2026-09-01 22:35 UTCPrediction
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.
Tale of the tape
Taylor FritzMattia BellucciPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-01.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
The briefing
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.
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