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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Flavio Cobolli vs 
Alexander Blockx
Round of 32
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Flavio Cobolli to advance · locked 2026-09-04 00:10 UTCPrediction
They have already played twice this year and split it: Blockx won 6-3 6-3 on clay in Monte Carlo in April, Cobolli won 7-5 4-6 7-5 on a hard court in Cincinnati three weeks ago. That second result is the one that matters here, and it was close enough that Blockx spent the following week being written up in Belgium as a man who had smelled victory and lost it. Cobolli is the fifth seed and ranked sixth, and he has now come from a set down in both of his matches this fortnight — from two sets down against Francisco Comesana in the first round, then from 3-6 against the qualifier Tristan Schoolkate, a match he won with lobs, including a between-the-legs winner. He is 33-19 for the season and in a US Open third round for the third straight year, having never gone further. Blockx is 21, seeded 28th on his US Open main-draw debut, and has reached a Grand Slam third round for the first time; he beat Marco Trungelliti in four with seventeen aces off a first serve he landed only 51% of the time. He is 21-23 on hard courts for a young career, which is the number under the ranking. The Elo tables give Cobolli about 74 points.
The case for Flavio Cobolli
67% to winTwo comebacks in two matches is not luck; it is a player who does not lose the thread when a set goes. Cobolli is ranked sixth for a reason, is 68-56 on hard courts against Blockx's 21-23, and beat him on this surface last month. Blockx put barely half his first serves in on Thursday and got away with it against a 36-year-old who served twelve double faults; against a returner of Cobolli's quality that percentage is a liability, not a footnote.
The case for Alexander Blockx
33% to winHe beat Cobolli 6-3 6-3 four months ago and took him to 7-5 in the third three weeks ago, so nothing about this opponent is unfamiliar or frightening. At 6ft 4in he is serving 88% behind his first ball, and Cobolli has now spent 5hr24 across two rounds to Blockx's 4hr26 — a gap that widens over five sets. First Grand Slam third round, no ranking points to defend, twenty-one years old and playing without weight.
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
Flavio CobolliAlexander BlockxPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-03.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-03.
The briefing
Storylines
- They have met twice in 2026 and split — Blockx on clay in Monte Carlo, Cobolli on a hard court in Cincinnati three weeks ago.
- Cobolli has come from a set down in both his matches here, and from two sets down in the first round.
- Blockx, 21, is in a Grand Slam third round for the first time, on his US Open main-draw debut.
- Cobolli is in the US Open third round for the third year running and has never reached the last sixteen here.
- Blockx hit seventeen aces against Trungelliti off a first serve he landed only 51% of the time.
Head to head
One each, both this season. Blockx won 6-3 6-3 in the second round in Monte Carlo in April, on clay; Cobolli won 7-5 4-6 7-5 in the second round in Cincinnati in August, on a hard court. The hard-court meeting is three weeks old.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-03.
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 2026-09-03)
Weather: Tonight carries a 29% chance of showers and thunderstorms before 2 a.m., mostly cloudy with a low near 74°F, which is the night session's only worry. Friday has improved sharply: the afternoon forecast had it at 46% and it is now a 21% slight chance after 2 p.m., mostly sunny, high near 83°F easing to 81°F, with the same 21% before 8 p.m. and then clearing. Saturday is the clean day — mostly sunny, 79°F, 3% — and Sunday holds at 75°F on 12%. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-03)
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