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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Karen Khachanov vs 
Benjamin Bonzi
Round of 32
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Karen Khachanov to advance · locked 2026-09-04 00:10 UTCPrediction
Two thirty-year-olds who have both had better seasons than this one, meeting in the round where that stops mattering. Khachanov is unseeded and ranked 50th and has just beaten the third seed Felix Auger-Aliassime, last year's semi-finalist, in four sets after losing the opening tiebreak — the biggest men's result of the fortnight so far. He was a US Open semi-finalist in 2022 and is 218-169 on hard courts for his career, which is the deepest hard-court body of work in this match by some distance. Bonzi is ranked 97th and 17-16 for the season, but his last two weeks have been his best in two years: a Winston-Salem semi-final, then a first-round win here over Alex Molcan split across two days by weather, then a straight-sets dismantling of the 32nd seed Ignacio Buse in which he hit 44 winners against 24 unforced errors and won 91% of his first-serve points. He also has form in this building — he put out Daniil Medvedev in the first round last year and reached the third round. Khachanov leads the head-to-head 2-0, both comfortable, the more recent a 6-4 6-0 7-5 in the second round of the 2022 Australian Open. The Elo tables separate them by about 33 points, which is nothing.
The case for Karen Khachanov
62% to winHe has beaten Bonzi twice without dropping much, he has a US Open semi-final on his record, and he has just taken out the third seed by holding his nerve after losing a first-set tiebreak. At 6ft 6in he serves through the middle of the court in a way Bonzi cannot answer, and the career hard-court numbers — 218-169 against 64-73 — describe two players at different altitudes on this surface.
The case for Benjamin Bonzi
38% to winBonzi is playing the best tennis of his last two years and is doing it here, on the courts where he beat Medvedev twelve months ago. Khachanov's season is 17-19 and he has just spent four sets and a lot of himself on Auger-Aliassime. If Bonzi keeps landing barely half his first serves and winning nine in ten of them, the margins in this match are one break either way.
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
Player 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
- Khachanov beat the third seed Felix Auger-Aliassime, last year's semi-finalist, in four sets on Thursday.
- Bonzi beat Daniil Medvedev in the first round here last year and reached the third round.
- Bonzi beat the 32nd seed Ignacio Buse 6-2 7-6(4) 6-0 six days after losing to him in the Winston-Salem semi-final.
- Khachanov is unseeded at a major for the first time since 2017 and ranked 50th, with a 17-19 season behind him.
- Both men are 30; between them they have played 47 Grand Slam main draws and no finals.
Head to head
Khachanov leads 2-0. He won 6-4 6-0 7-5 in the second round of the 2022 Australian Open, and 6-1 4-6 7-6(4) on clay in Lyon in May 2021. This is their first meeting in four and a half years.
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.
