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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 64
Lorenzo Musetti vs 
Dane Sweeny
Round of 64
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Lorenzo Musetti to advance · locked 2026-09-01 23:40 UTCPrediction
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.
Tale of the tape
Lorenzo MusettiDane SweenyPlayer 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
- 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.
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