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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Zizou Bergs vs 
Botic van de Zandschulp
Round of 32
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Botic van de Zandschulp to advance · locked 2026-09-04 05:50 UTCPrediction
Two men arrived at the same round on Thursday night by opposite routes. Van de Zandschulp took two hours 43 minutes to beat the sixth seed Alex de Minaur in straight sets, making 21 unforced errors and losing serve once. Bergs took three hours 39 minutes to beat Jesper de Jong, making 65 unforced errors and eight double faults in a match that contained thirteen breaks of serve and was settled in a fourth-set tiebreak. They have never played each other. Hard-court Elo has van de Zandschulp thirteen points ahead despite being 33 places lower in the rankings, and the career hard-court records say the same thing louder: 116-99 for the Dutchman against 69-71 for the seed. Van de Zandschulp is also the more dangerous man on this particular court — a quarter-finalist here as a qualifier in 2021, the man who put Carlos Alcaraz out in the second round in 2024, and a top-ten scalp again last month against Daniil Medvedev in Montreal. Bergs is seeded at a major for the first time in his career and this equals his best US Open. The freshness gap and the history both point one way.
The case for Zizou Bergs
42% to winBergs is the seed, ranked 33 places higher, and has already proved this fortnight that he can win an ugly match — he lost the first four games to de Jong and the second set 6-1 and still found seven breaks of serve and a 7-2 tiebreak. He hit 41 winners to 22 and served an 139 mph delivery, the biggest of the match. He reached the third round here last year too, so nothing about this stage is new to him, and he won his maiden tour title in June.
The case for Botic van de Zandschulp
58% to winVan de Zandschulp has beaten a top-ten player at this tournament twice now, and Thursday's was the cleaner performance of the two men by a distance: 77% of first-serve points won, 21 unforced errors, three match points saved against him and taken on the fourth. He is 47 games and 56 minutes fresher than Bergs coming into this. His career hard-court record is 116-99 against Bergs's 69-71, and hard-court Elo prefers him despite the ranking gap.
Both cases written 2026-09-04, 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
Zizou BergsBotic van de ZandschulpPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-04.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-04.
The briefing
Storylines
- First meeting between them, at any level.
- Van de Zandschulp beat the sixth seed Alex de Minaur in straight sets on Grandstand on Thursday night.
- Bergs needed three hours 39 minutes and a fourth-set tiebreak to get past Jesper de Jong.
- Van de Zandschulp reached the 2021 US Open quarter-finals as a qualifier and beat Carlos Alcaraz here in 2024.
- Bergs is seeded at a major for the first time; the third round equals his best US Open, from 2025.
Head to head
They have never met at tour level.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-04.
Watch: Third-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 2026-09-04)
Weather: Friday carries a 25% chance of showers and thunderstorms with a high near 81°F, the risk fading through the afternoon, so a delay is possible rather than likely. Friday night is partly cloudy at 13% and 70°F. Saturday is the clean day — sunny, 78°F, 6% — with isolated showers at 16% after dark, and Sunday is mostly sunny at 72°F on 8%. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-04)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
At this Stage
The Round of 32 is the third round, and the last one before a Grand Slam draw becomes a small tournament: sixteen men's matches across Friday and Saturday leave sixteen players standing, every one of them having won twice on these courts. This is the round where the seeding chart stops doing any work — from here on, whoever is left is who you play.
Round of 64
Round of 16