US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Jiri Lehecka vs 
Stefanos Tsitsipas
Round of 32
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Jiri Lehecka to advance · locked 2026-09-03 02:50 UTCPrediction
This is the fresher man against the man with the better fortnight. Lehecka, the 18th seed and 19th in the world, has spent about six hours on court to get here — four sets against Pablo Carreno Busta, then 1hr 48min to beat the qualifier Toby Samuel 6-4 6-2 6-4, a match he began by being broken from 40-0 and falling heavily on his right wrist. Tsitsipas is unseeded, 53rd in the world, and has played the two most demanding matches in this quarter: four sets to knock out the 10th seed Arthur Fils, a man he had never beaten in five attempts, and then 3hr 27min against another qualifier, Lloyd Harris, in which he went 5 of 17 on break points and won the fourth set by one point. That is nearly seven and a half hours in two rounds against Lehecka's six, and it is the difference the Elo tables do not see. What they do see is a small gap: 65 points on hard-court Elo, which is about as close as this round gets. The head-to-head is 2-2 and splits neatly by era — Tsitsipas won both meetings when he was a top-five player, Lehecka won both after that, most recently 6-4 6-4 in the Antwerp quarter-final in October 2024. Lehecka is the pick, narrowly, and mostly on legs.
The case for Jiri Lehecka
59% to winLehecka has won the last two meetings, both on hard courts and both in straight sets, and he has been in this position before — the quarter-finals here last year are his best Slam result. He has dropped one set in two rounds and has an extra day and a half of freshness on an opponent who has played five hours and forty minutes of tennis in the last four days. He returns better than Tsitsipas serves under pressure, which is the exact seam Harris opened for two sets on Wednesday.
The case for Stefanos Tsitsipas
41% to winTsitsipas has beaten a top-ten seed and a qualifier playing out of his mind, and he has done it while unseeded and outside the top fifty — which means he arrives with nothing to protect and the form of a man who has remembered how to close. His career hard-court record is 253-139 against Lehecka's 111-75, he has been to a Grand Slam quarter-final eight times, and he took both of the two meetings that happened at a major or above. If his forehand holds up for three sets rather than two, the experience gap is real.
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
Jiri LeheckaStefanos TsitsipasPlayer 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
- Tsitsipas is unseeded at a Grand Slam and into the third round for the first time since Roland-Garros 2024.
- He has beaten the 10th seed Arthur Fils and the qualifier Lloyd Harris, the latter in 3hr 27min.
- Lehecka reached the US Open quarter-finals in 2025, his best major result.
- Lehecka has spent about six hours on court in two rounds; Tsitsipas nearly seven and a half.
- The head-to-head is 2-2, and Lehecka has won the two most recent meetings.
Head to head
Level at 2-2, all four on hard courts: Lehecka won 6-4 6-4 in the Antwerp quarter-final in October 2024 and 6-2 6-4 in the Indian Wells round of 16 in March 2024; Tsitsipas won 6-3 7-6(2) 6-4 in the Australian Open quarter-final in 2023 and 4-6 6-4 6-2 in the Rotterdam semi-final in 2022.
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