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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 64
Frances Tiafoe vs 
Rei Sakamoto
Wednesday, September 2, 2026 · Round of 64
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Frances Tiafoe to advance · locked 2026-09-01 09:45 UTCPrediction
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.
Tale of the tape
Frances TiafoeRei SakamotoPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-01.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
The briefing
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.
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: 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: 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