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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Flavio Cobolli vs Alexander Blockx — 6-7(4) 6-3 6-0 6-3
 Alexander Blockx✓ | 64 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
 Flavio Cobolli | 7 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
Final · Saturday, September 5, 2026 · Round of 32
Result
Blockx lost the first set on a tiebreak and won the next eleven games. The hinge was Cobolli's hold for 3-2 in the second — eighteen points, ten minutes, three break points saved — which he won and then could not recover from: Blockx took the last four games of that set and all six of the third, a 6-0 that lasted nineteen minutes and cost Cobolli four points. Blockx had stopped at 3-2 in the first-set tiebreak for a medical timeout, an old wound on his right shin bleeding, and won eighteen of the twenty-two games that followed it. He finished with seventeen aces to five, 86% of his first-serve points against 59%, sixteen holds out of eighteen, and 136 points to 91. Cobolli had needed five sets and four hours to beat Comesaña and four more to beat Schoolkate, and every report of this one puts the fade down to that rather than to anything new. At 21 it is Blockx's first Grand Slam fourth round and his second win over a top-ten player, the first at a major. He had named the thing that decided it beforehand: "He's had a lot of court time this week already and he'll be ready — but so am I."
Flavio CobolliRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
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.
Flavio CobolliAlexander Blockx✓Round of 64
Round of 32
What we know now
Court: Louis Armstrong Stadium
Match length: 2:45
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.
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.
My locked pick: Flavio Cobolli to advance ✗ WRONG
“He won the hard-court meeting three weeks ago and has twice this week refused to lose after dropping a set; the clay result is the one that does not transfer.”
Locked 2026-09-04 00:10 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Flavio CobolliAlexander BlockxPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-04.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-03.
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.
Court & schedule: Louis Armstrong Stadium, Saturday 5 September. 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 2026-09-04)
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.