US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 64
Frances Tiafoe vs Rei Sakamoto — 6-3 7-6(2) 7-5
 Frances Tiafoe✓ | 6 | 7 | 7 |
 Rei Sakamoto | 3 | 62 | 5 |
Final · Wednesday, September 2, 2026 · Round of 64
Result
Rei Sakamoto out-served Frances Tiafoe, out-hit him, and lost in straight sets under the Armstrong lights. The 20-year-old Japanese qualifier — who ended Kei Nishikori's last Grand Slam in the qualifying final and then beat Aleksandar Vukic in a rain-split five-setter for his first main-draw win anywhere — struck 18 aces to Tiafoe's seven and 38 winners to 23, but made 40 unforced errors to 18, and they arrived at both moments that decided a set. Tiafoe broke in the second game and took the opener untroubled. In the second Sakamoto broke back with the 11th seed serving for it, then lost the tiebreak 7-2 on his own mistakes. The third stayed on serve until Tiafoe saved a break point at 4-4 with a passing shot and broke a tightening Sakamoto in the twelfth game. Tiafoe, who had needed five sets and nearly four hours against fellow American Martin Damm on Tuesday night, is into the third round for the seventh year running at his twelfth US Open. He told the crowd he had played far more solidly than in that opener — and joked that this time the support was all his.
Frances TiafoeRows 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.
Frances Tiafoe✓Rei SakamotoRound of 128
Round of 64
What we know now
Court: Louis Armstrong Stadium
Match length: 2:40
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.
Tiafoe, who has reached two semi-finals here and needed all of a five-set, three-hour-forty-eight-minute night on Louis Armstrong to survive the first round. Martin Damm hit twenty-eight aces and seventy-two winners against him and lost by a single point across the whole match, 157 to 156. That is a warning about the seed's margins and not much else: Tiafoe faced no break point in the deciding set and has won a first-round match at this event in every year since 2018. Sakamoto is 20, a Japanese qualifier ranked 157th, and his own Monday was a five-setter too — 6-4 6-7(5) 6-4 3-6 6-4 over Aleksandar Vukic in a match the two of them served sixty aces in. He has never played a second-round match at a major. Tiafoe is nearly 300 points of hard-court Elo clear and playing at home; the case for the upset is fatigue and a crowd that will not save a seed from a bad day.
The case for Frances Tiafoe
84% to winTiafoe is the 11th seed and world No. 12, with semi-finals here in 2022 and 2024 and 202 career hard-court wins to Sakamoto's thirteen. He came through the hardest first round of his recent career and faced no break point at all in the fifth set — the sign of a player whose serve holds when the match narrows. He is playing in front of a home crowd that has carried him deep at this event twice.
The case for Rei Sakamoto
16% to winSakamoto came through three rounds of qualifying and then five sets against Aleksandar Vukic, and at 20 he is the fresher-legged of the two even after seven hours of tennis in a week. Tiafoe was taken to the limit by a man ranked 90th and double-faulted his way through a third set he lost 6-3. A qualifier with a big serve and nothing to lose has beaten a seed on these courts before.
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: Frances Tiafoe to advance ✓ RIGHT
“A two-time semi-finalist at home against a first-time main-draw qualifier — the margin on Monday was one point, but it was against a far better opponent than this.”
Locked 2026-09-01 09:45 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Frances TiafoeRei SakamotoPlayer 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
- Tiafoe beat Martin Damm 6-4 4-6 3-6 6-3 6-4 in 3 hours 48 minutes, winning 157 points to 156.
- Sakamoto, a 20-year-old qualifier ranked 157th, beat Aleksandar Vukic 6-4 6-7(5) 6-4 3-6 6-4; the two hit sixty aces between them.
- It is Sakamoto's first US Open main draw and his first second-round match at any Grand Slam.
- Tiafoe has reached the US Open semi-finals twice, in 2022 and 2024, and has never gone further at a major.
- They have never played each other.
Head to head
They have never met.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
Court & schedule: Louis Armstrong Stadium, Wednesday 2 September in the night session. 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 2026-09-01)
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.