US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 16
Carlos Alcaraz vs 
Tommy Paul
Round of 16
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Carlos Alcaraz to advance · locked 2026-09-05 01:40 UTCPrediction
Alcaraz leads this 6-2 and has won the last five, including the Australian Open fourth round in January, 7-6(6) 6-4 7-5 — the same round, the same year, and close enough that Paul will not think it is out of reach. Both of Paul's wins came on hard courts in 2022 and 2023, which is the honest shape of the head-to-head: it used to be competitive and it is not any more. The Elo gap is 201 points on hard, about three-to-one. What makes this less lopsided than the numbers is the state of both men. Alcaraz is playing his first tournament since April after a wrist injury that cost him Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, and he has not been convincing here — he broke and was broken straight back in the first game of each of the first two sets against Yibing Wu, made thirty-three unforced errors and needed fifteen break points to convert seven. He is winning because his floor is a Grand Slam winner's floor, on a seventeen-match Slam streak that includes the title here and the Australian Open. Paul has the opposite problem: he played three hours and thirteen minutes on Friday to come back from two sets to one down against Alexander Bublik, which is a lot of tennis to carry into a Sunday, and Alcaraz said afterwards he hoped Paul would be tired. But Paul also served one double fault in five sets and broke six times from eight chances, and he is 38-17 on the season. Alcaraz, and probably in four.
The case for Carlos Alcaraz
78% to winAlcaraz has won five in a row against Paul, is on a seventeen-match Grand Slam winning streak, and is the defending champion. His hard-court Elo is 201 points higher, about a three-in-four proposition, and his career hard-court record of 166-46 is a winning percentage nobody left in this half approaches. He has seven majors at 23. He won their most recent meeting in this exact round at the Australian Open in straight sets. And Paul arrives having spent three hours and thirteen minutes on court on Friday, two days before this, in a fifth set — a physical debt that Alcaraz, who has dropped one set all week, does not have.
The case for Tommy Paul
22% to winPaul has beaten Alcaraz twice, both on hard courts, and took a set off him as recently as this January in the Australian Open fourth round — a match in which two of the three sets were decided by a tiebreak or a single break. He is 38-17 for the season, his career hard-court record is 194-115, and he has just won a five-set match by breaking six times from eight chances with a single double fault across three hours and thirteen minutes. Alcaraz is three matches into his first tournament in five months and has looked it: thirty-three unforced errors against a player ranked 113th, and a break surrendered immediately in each of the first two sets.
Both cases written 2026-09-05, 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
Carlos AlcarazTommy PaulPlayer 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
- Alcaraz leads 6-2 and has won the last five, most recently the Australian Open fourth round in January, 7-6(6) 6-4 7-5.
- Both of Paul's wins came on hard courts, in 2022 and 2023.
- Alcaraz is on a seventeen-match Grand Slam winning streak — the title here last year and the Australian Open in February — in his first tournament since April after a wrist injury.
- Paul came back from two sets to one down and beat Alexander Bublik in three hours thirteen minutes on Friday, reversing last year's third round.
- Alcaraz needed fifteen break points to convert seven against the 113th-ranked Yibing Wu, and made thirty-three unforced errors.
Head to head
Eight meetings, Alcaraz leading 6-2. Paul won on hard courts in 2022 and 2023; Alcaraz has taken the five since, the last of them the Australian Open fourth round in January, 7-6(6) 6-4 7-5.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-04.
Watch: Fourth-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 2026-09-05)
Weather: Today is sunny and 79°F with no rain in it at all, and the only moisture left in the window comes tonight — isolated showers on a 20% chance, 67°F. Sunday is mostly sunny at 74°F on 12% and clear at 63°F after dark, Labor Day is sunny and 77°F on 1%, and Tuesday is mostly sunny at 79°F on nothing. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-05)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
At this Stage
The Round of 16 is the fourth round, and the point at which a Grand Slam stops being a draw and becomes a tournament you can hold in your head: eight matches, played across Sunday and Monday, and the eight who come through are the quarter-finalists. Everyone still here has won three matches on these courts, so the seedings have stopped being a guide and the form of the fortnight has taken over.
Round of 32
Quarter-finals