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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 64
Lorenzo Musetti vs Dane Sweeny — 3-6 6-1 6-2 6-2
 Dane Sweeny✓ | 3 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
 Lorenzo Musetti | 6 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
Final · Thursday, September 3, 2026 · Round of 64
Result
Musetti won the first set and then spent three more in trouble that was not tactical. The physical problem began at the end of the second — dizziness and nausea, by the Italian reporting — and after the third game of the third set he took a single off-court medical timeout, returning with no strapping and no diagnosis on the record. He chose to play on rather than retire. Afterwards he blamed a temperature shock between very hot courts and an over-air-conditioned players' area, said that once his body crossed a threshold there was no coming back, and told SuperTennis there was no point discussing tennis or technique: he had arrived with real ambitions for this Slam and now had to think again. Sweeny, a 170cm wild card, was in a US Open main draw for the first time and only got in at all through a chain of withdrawals — Alejandro Davidovich Fokina pulled out, Alexei Popyrin moved up on ranking, and the wildcard he vacated went to Sweeny. He broke eight times from seventeen chances; Musetti served seven double faults, made 40 unforced errors and won 55% of his first-serve points. It is Sweeny's first Grand Slam third round and his first top-20 win. A year ago he was No. 408.
Lorenzo MusettiRows 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.
Lorenzo MusettiDane Sweeny✓Round of 128
Round of 64
What we know now
Court: Stadium 17
Match length: 2:36
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.
Musetti, and the gap in the rankings understates rather than overstates it — but the way he won on Tuesday is a reason not to write the match off. The 13th seed beat Arthur Fery in straight sets and still needed three attempts to close it: a match point missed at 5-3, a service game lost from 15-40 at 5-4, a double fault in the middle of it. He is 24, ranked 14th, a quarter-finalist here last year, and he arrived having missed both Roland Garros and Wimbledon with a torn thigh muscle, so a first-round win in humid conditions counts as a useful two hours. Sweeny is a wild card who only entered when Alexei Popyrin moved up, and this is his first US Open main draw; he is 25, ranked 123rd, and a year ago he was 408th. He beat Corentin Moutet by grinding — 101 points to 86, 18 unforced errors to 48 — before Moutet retired at 0-3 in the third, so he has played two and a half sets of competitive tennis to Musetti's three. That is the only advantage on his side of the ledger, and it is not a small one on a rain-shortened schedule.
The case for Lorenzo Musetti
87% to winMusetti is 109 places higher, a top-15 player and a quarter-finalist here last year, and the surface suits him less than clay but not badly — he reached the last eight at Cincinnati a fortnight ago. He hit 22 winners to 17 against Fery, won 77% of his first-serve points and 68% of his second, and broke six times from nine chances. Sweeny has never won a tour-level match against a top-20 player, and best-of-five against a man with a one-handed backhand and eight years of Slam main draws is a different examination from beating Moutet on attrition.
The case for Dane Sweeny
13% to winSweeny has nothing to defend and no reason to tighten: he is in the main draw on a wild card he got by accident, past the first round at a major for the first time, and playing the tennis of his life — 408th in the world a year ago, 123rd now. Against Moutet he made 18 unforced errors in two and a half sets and won 27 of 38 points at the net, which is a game plan rather than a fluke. Musetti has played four competitive matches since June and a five-set-capable opponent who never misses is the last thing a player wants in week one.
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: Lorenzo Musetti to advance ✗ WRONG
“A top-15 seed against a 123rd-ranked debutant, over five sets — the rankings, the surface record and the Slam experience all point one way, and Sweeny's freshness is the only counterweight.”
Locked 2026-09-01 23:40 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Lorenzo MusettiDane SweenyPlayer 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
- First meeting. Sweeny has never played a top-20 opponent at a Grand Slam.
- Musetti beat Arthur Fery 6-3 6-3 7-5, but missed a match point at 5-3 in the third and was broken serving for it at 5-4 before finishing two games later.
- Musetti missed both Roland Garros and Wimbledon this year with a torn thigh muscle; his best US Open result is the 2025 quarter-final.
- Sweeny entered as a wild card only after Alexei Popyrin moved up into the main draw, and this is his US Open main-draw debut.
- Sweeny's first round ended with Corentin Moutet retiring at 0-3 in the third; Sweeny led 7-6(4) 6-4 and had made 18 unforced errors to Moutet's 48.
Head to head
They have never met, at tour level or below.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
Court & schedule: Stadium 17, 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.