US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Tomas Martin Etcheverry vs Mariano Navone — 6-4 6-4 6-3
 Tomas Martin Etcheverry✓ | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Mariano Navone | 4 | 4 | 3 |
Final · Friday, September 4, 2026 · Round of 32
Result
An all-Argentine third round, and it turned on one game: Navone served at 4-5, 40-0 in the first set and lost five points in a row. Etcheverry broke again to take the second after Navone had converted his only break point of the match, and broke once more in the third. The seedings said little about the week each had had — Etcheverry arrived in New York without a win in Washington, Montreal or Cincinnati, while Navone had put out Novak Djokovic in five sets in the first round and Matteo Berrettini in the second. On Court 11 it was the 27-year-old from La Plata who looked the fresher, serving eight aces to four, winning 66% of his second-serve points and taking four break points from eight. "I won a lot of important points with my serve, and I knew I might be in better physical shape because of the matches he'd played," he said courtside. "I'd come off several defeats and I found my tennis again." He dedicated the win to his father, who he said is going through a difficult time: "I'm playing for him." It is his first US Open fourth round.
Tomas Martin EtcheverryRows 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.
Tomas Martin Etcheverry✓Mariano NavoneRound of 64
Round of 32
What we know now
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.
An all-Argentine third round, and the hard-court Elo tables cannot separate them: seven points apart, which is a coin toss with a rounding error. Everything else points at Navone. He has beaten the fourth seed and a former Wimbledon finalist in the same week — Novak Djokovic over five sets and 4hr 36min in the first round, from two sets to one down, and then Matteo Berrettini 3-6 6-3 6-4 7-6(4) on Wednesday, a match in which Berrettini hit more winners and more aces and made 77 unforced errors. Etcheverry, the 27th seed and 32nd in the world, has had the quieter fortnight by design: 6-3 6-4 6-0 over Vit Kopriva, then four sets against the lucky loser Jacob Fearnley. He is the taller man by seven inches and the bigger server, and this equals his best US Open, from 2024. Against that, the career hard-court records read 52-58 for Etcheverry and 14-34 for Navone, which is the number that argues for the seed and the one Navone has spent this week making look irrelevant. They have never met on tour. Navone, narrowly, on the evidence of the last five days rather than the last five years.
The case for Tomas Martin Etcheverry
48% to winEtcheverry is the seed, ranked seventeen places higher, and has spent far less of himself getting here — one straight-sets win and one four-setter against a lucky loser, where Navone has played nine sets and close to eight hours against Djokovic and Berrettini. At 6ft 5in he serves bigger than anyone Navone has faced this week, and Navone's career hard-court record of 14-34 says this is still not his surface. A third round in New York in 2024 says he knows how to win a match at this stage.
The case for Mariano Navone
52% to winNavone has beaten a four-time champion's heir apparent and a Wimbledon finalist on these courts inside five days, and he did it by refusing to miss — 37 unforced errors to Berrettini's 77, 70% first serves, 62% of second-serve points won. He is the better mover, he has the higher overall Elo despite the ranking gap, and he arrives with the confidence of a man who has already had the fortnight of his life. Nothing about the way he has played here suggests the hard-court record still describes him.
Both cases written 2026-09-03, 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: Mariano Navone to advance ✗ WRONG
“Hard-court Elo is a coin toss; Navone has beaten the fourth seed and a Wimbledon finalist in the same week.”
Locked 2026-09-03 03:15 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Tomas Martin EtcheverryMariano NavonePlayer 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 2026-09-02.
Storylines
- An all-Argentine third round: they have never met on the tour.
- Navone beat the fourth seed Novak Djokovic in the first round over five sets and 4hr 36min.
- He then beat Matteo Berrettini in four, and is into a US Open third round for the first time.
- Etcheverry equals his best US Open run, the third round in 2024.
- Hard-court Elo separates them by seven points; career hard-court records by 52-58 to 14-34.
Head to head
They have never met at tour level.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-02.
Court & schedule: Court 11, Friday 4 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 2026-09-03)
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.