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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Jiri Lehecka vs Stefanos Tsitsipas — 2-6 6-1 7-6(3) 6-1
 Stefanos Tsitsipas✓ | 2 | 6 | 7 | 6 |
 Jiri Lehecka | 6 | 1 | 63 | 1 |
Final · Friday, September 4, 2026 · Round of 32
Result
Lehecka won fourteen of the first sixteen points, led 3-0 and had the set in thirty-two minutes; Tsitsipas served three double faults in one game and smiled at the last of them. The second took thirty-three minutes the other way, Tsitsipas making two unforced errors in it and winning it 6-1. The third went twelve straight holds — Lehecka managed five winners in the whole set and kept holding anyway — before Tsitsipas took an early mini-break in the tiebreak, ran to 6-1 and closed it 7-3. He broke twice more in the fourth and finished with a love game. Twelve aces to three, thirty-four winners to twenty-two, thirty unforced errors against the 18th seed's forty-one. Tsitsipas came into the tournament ranked 53rd and unseeded, beat the 10th seed Arthur Fils in the first round, and in a ninth US Open appearance has reached the fourth round here for the first time; a first Grand Slam quarter-final since Roland-Garros 2024 is one win away. "They're starting to embrace me," he told the Grandstand crowd. "I've never had this support in New York ever before."
Jiri LeheckaRows 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.
Jiri LeheckaStefanos Tsitsipas✓Round of 64
Round of 32
What we know now
Court: Grandstand
Match length: 2:33
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.
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.
My locked pick: Jiri Lehecka to advance ✗ WRONG
“The two most recent meetings, both straight-sets on hard, and an hour and a half less tennis in the legs.”
Locked 2026-09-03 02:50 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Jiri LeheckaStefanos TsitsipasPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-04.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-02.
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.
Court & schedule: Grandstand, 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.