US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 32
Learner Tien vs Jakub Mensik — 6-3 1-6 6-7(2) 6-3 6-4
 Learner Tien✓ | 6 | 1 | 62 | 6 | 6 |
 Jakub Mensik | 3 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 4 |
Final · Saturday, September 5, 2026 · Round of 32
Result
Menšík hit 23 aces to Tien's four, 55 winners to 35, and won five more points than him across three and a half hours — and lost. He had six break points that mattered and took none: three at 2-2 in the fourth set, three more from 40-0 at 2-2 in the fifth. Between them came the night's other story. At 2-2 in the fourth he told the chair umpire Marija Čičak that a spectator had been insulting him all match; two games later, at 3-4 and 0-40 on the Tien serve, he stopped play again and asked for the supervisor. The crowd booed, then chanted for the man to be thrown out, and security walked him up the steps. Menšík converted none of those three break points either, closed the set with a double fault, and lost the fifth when he netted a forehand on Tien's second match point at 4-5. "A five-set battle," he said afterwards. "My opponent played very well. In the end he was the luckier one." On the spectator: "No comment." Tien, now 5-0 in five-setters, was blunter about what had carried him: "If this stadium was empty I'm really not sure I'd win this match tonight."
Learner TienRows 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.
Learner Tien✓Jakub MensikRound of 64
Round of 32
What we know now
Court: Louis Armstrong Stadium
Match length: 3:24
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.
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.
My locked pick: Learner Tien to advance ✓ RIGHT
“Higher seed, higher hard-court Elo, holds the head-to-head, and has not been broken in his most recent match.”
Locked 2026-09-04 05:50 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
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.
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.
Court & schedule: Louis Armstrong Stadium, Saturday 5 September in the night session. 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 2026-09-04)
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.