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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Tomas Martin Etcheverry vs Mariano Navone
Round of 32
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Mariano Navone to advance · locked 2026-09-03 03:15 UTCPrediction
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.
Tale of the tape
Tomas Martin EtcheverryMariano NavonePlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-02.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-02.
The briefing
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.
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 2026-09-02)
Weather: Wednesday night is wet: showers and thunderstorms likely at 64% on a low near 72°F, which is the night session's problem and the roofs' answer. Thursday stays unsettled — 83°F, showers and thunderstorms likely, again at 64% — and eases to 33% overnight. Friday improves without quite clearing: mostly sunny and 82°F, with a slight shower chance at 23%. Saturday is the clean day, sunny and 78°F on 2%, and Sunday is sunny at 74°F. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-02)
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