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Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Learner Tien vs 
Jakub Mensik
Round of 32
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Learner Tien to advance · locked 2026-09-04 05:50 UTCPrediction
The best-matched pair in this section of the draw: the 17th seed against the 14th, 21 against 20, three ranking places apart and sixteen points apart on hard-court Elo. The contrast is physical rather than statistical. Mensik is 6ft 5in and right-handed and serves accordingly; Tien is 5ft 11in and left-handed and beat Gael Monfils on Thursday night without losing serve once, holding his opponent to nought from eight break points and 21 unforced errors of his own against 54. They have played once, at the 2024 Next Gen Finals, in that event's short-set format: Tien won it 4-3(6) 4-3(3) 2-4 2-4 4-3(8), which is to say he won three tiebreaks in a match decided by one. Mensik's hard-court record is the better one at 78-42 to 60-33, and he is the only man in this match with a piece of silverware from this fortnight — he won the reformatted mixed doubles championship with Karolina Muchova in Fan Week. But Tien has looked the more economical player through two rounds, and Elo, the head-to-head and the left hand all lean the same way, if only just.
The case for Learner Tien
53% to winTien has not lost serve in this tournament's most recent test of it, holding Monfils to nought from eight break points, and his 21 unforced errors on Thursday night were the fewest of any man in the section. He is the higher seed, three places higher in the rankings, sixteen points ahead on hard-court Elo, and he has beaten Mensik before — in a five-set match at the Next Gen Finals decided on a tiebreak. A left-hander who returns this well is an awkward first read for a big server.
The case for Jakub Mensik
47% to winMensik is six inches taller and serves like it, with a career hard-court record of 78-42 against Tien's 60-33 and a better season on the surface. He has already been to this round here, in 2024, where Tien had never won a US Open main-draw match before this week. He also has a fortnight's worth of match play and a title in the building: he won the mixed doubles championship with Karolina Muchova during Fan Week, which is two ways of saying he arrives comfortable on these courts.
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
Learner TienJakub MensikPlayer 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 2026-09-04.
The briefing
Storylines
- The 14th seed against the 17th: three ranking places and sixteen Elo points apart.
- Tien won their only meeting, at the 2024 Next Gen Finals, on a fifth-set tiebreak.
- Tien ended Gael Monfils's Grand Slam career on Thursday night without losing serve.
- Mensik won this tournament's reformatted mixed doubles championship with Karolina Muchova in Fan Week.
- A 6ft 5in right-hander against a 5ft 11in left-hander; Mensik's best US Open is the third round in 2024.
Head to head
One meeting, at the 2024 Next Gen Finals: Tien won 4-3(6) 4-3(3) 2-4 2-4 4-3(8) in that event's short-set format, taking three tiebreaks including the last.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-04.
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 2026-09-04)
Weather: Friday carries a 25% chance of showers and thunderstorms with a high near 81°F, the risk fading through the afternoon, so a delay is possible rather than likely. Friday night is partly cloudy at 13% and 70°F. Saturday is the clean day — sunny, 78°F, 6% — with isolated showers at 16% after dark, and Sunday is mostly sunny at 72°F on 8%. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-04)
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