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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 128
Anastasia Potapova vs Darja Semenistaja — 6-2 6-2
 Anastasia Potapova✓ | 6 | 6 |
 Darja Semenistaja | 2 | 2 |
Final · Tuesday, September 1, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
Potapova's first Grand Slam match under a flag: she announced in December that her Austrian citizenship had come through and that from 2026 she would represent "my new homeland Austria," ending four years as a neutral athlete. Rain shut every unroofed court for a third straight day and put her on late; the tennis took 75 minutes. Semenistaja, a lucky loser after Tereza Valentova withdrew that morning with a hip problem, held the opening game to love and broke for 4-2, and won two more games all afternoon. Potapova hit 32 winners to three and ten aces to none while landing barely half her first serves. Both women earned nine break points; she took five to Semenistaja's one. Two games swallowed a quarter of the match — a nine-minute hold in the second set in which Semenistaja missed three break points, and a ten-minute closer in which she saved three match points and missed five more. It was Potapova's seventh US Open, Semenistaja's second lucky-loser entry of the year, and the pair's first meeting.
Anastasia PotapovaRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
Round of 128, third day, and one of the last first-round matches on the calendar — the expanded fifteen-day draw spreads the opening round across Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. A withdrawal has rewritten this one: the coin-flip against a 19-year-old ranked 57th became a seed against a lucky loser. The winner meets Jeanjean or a qualifier in the Round of 64, as soft a follow-up as this draw offers, before Andreeva's section of the quarter comes calling.
What we know now
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.
Tereza Valentova withdrew and Darja Semenistaja came in as a lucky loser, which turns a genuinely close seed-versus-teenager first round into a match Potapova should win. The 24th seed is 27-19 for the season, ranked 25th, and has 129 hard-court wins on her record; she is also playing a first Grand Slam since taking Austrian nationality, having reached the third round here in 2024 when she was competing for Russia. Semenistaja was the fourth seed in qualifying and lost there, to Storm Hunter 6-4 6-1, so she arrives in the main draw with a defeat rather than three wins behind her — the awkward half of the lucky-loser deal. She is 23, Latvian, left-handed, and ranked 109th, which is close enough to her career-best to make the gap in ranking a real but not decisive 84 places. They have never played. The variables are the rain — Tuesday is the wettest day on the board and this is an outside court — and the fact that Potapova has had to re-plan for a completely different opponent inside forty-eight hours.
The case for Anastasia Potapova
72% to winPotapova is 84 places higher in the world, seeded 24th, and has been to the third round here before. Her hard-court career record of 129-110 is more than double her opponent's body of tour-level work, and she is playing an opponent who has already lost a match this fortnight. A seed drawn against a lucky loser is the single most favourable swap available in a first round.
The case for Darja Semenistaja
28% to winSemenistaja is left-handed, which is the one structural thing in this match that a seed cannot practise around at short notice, and she has had a week on these courts while Potapova has had none. Nothing about her qualifying loss to Storm Hunter — a former world No. 1 in doubles playing some of her best singles tennis — reads as a collapse. At No. 109 she is a top-100-calibre player getting a free swing at a seed she has never met, on a day the weather may make ugly.
Both cases written 2026-09-01, 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: Anastasia Potapova to advance ✓ RIGHT
“A seed ranked 84 places higher against a lucky loser who arrives on a qualifying defeat rather than three wins.”
Locked 2026-09-01 01:20 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Anastasia PotapovaDarja SemenistajaPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-08-28.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-31.
Storylines
- Tereza Valentova, originally drawn here, withdrew; Semenistaja replaces her as a lucky loser.
- Semenistaja was the fourth seed in qualifying and lost there to Storm Hunter 6-4 6-1.
- Potapova now competes for Austria; she was born in Saratov and reached the third round here in 2024.
- Semenistaja is left-handed and ranked 109th; Potapova is ranked 25th and seeded 24th.
- First meeting; they have never played at tour level.
Head to head
They have never met at tour level.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-31.
Court & schedule: Court 5, Tuesday 1 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 2026-08-31)
Weather: Sunday — the men's final, and the last match of the fortnight — was forecast at 78°F with showers and thunderstorms 95% likely, the wettest day of the two weeks and the one day that could not be pushed back. The rain came in the morning and stopped before the final, which Ashe played with its roof open. It cleared from there: 15% overnight, 15% Monday, then dry and sunny. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-13)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.