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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 128
Hanne Vandewinkel vs Karolina Pliskova — 2-6 7-5 6-3
 Karolina Pliskova✓ | 2 | 7 | 6 |
 Hanne Vandewinkel | 6 | 5 | 3 |
Final · Sunday, August 30, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
Pliskova lost the first set 6-2, went down 5-2 in the second, saved a match point — and then won nine games in a row. She took the second 7-5 and the first four of the third on the way to 6-3, and finished having won exactly as many points as Vandewinkel: 110 each. First-serve points split 62% apiece, second-serve points 40% to 39%, twelve breaks of serve across two and a half hours. It is the tenth US Open in succession at which she has reached the second round. The scoreboard eventually picked a side; the statistics never did.
Hanne VandewinkelRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
Round of 128, and one of the field's best comeback stories resumes: Plíšková, a decade past her 2016 final here, is winning again at 34 — 21 times this season — and opens against a Belgian playing her first US Open. The bracket offers the winner Snigur or 15th-seeded Shnaider in the Round of 64 — a section the top seeds have left unusually open. Every Plíšková win from here extends one of the era's longest serving clinics. Sunday through Tuesday.
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.
Plíšková. At 34, in a comeback season nobody asked her to justify, the former world No. 1 has quietly assembled a 21–12 year — and she returns to the tournament where she reached the 2016 final with a serve that still ranks among the sport's most efficient. Vandewinkel's rise to No. 77 has been earnest and recent, but it has run almost entirely off hard courts: her tour-level record on this surface is four wins. The gap in surface citizenship (329 career hard-court wins to four) is the widest in the women's first round, and Plíšková's flat, early-strike game gives young legs nothing useful to chase. The Belgian's best chance is a cold-serving day from a 34-year-old — they happen. Plíšková in two.
The case for Hanne Vandewinkel
34% to winVandewinkel is 22, improving monthly, and facing a legend whose season has been rebuilt around picking spots — a first-round upset of a 34-year-old on a hot afternoon is the most ordinary result in tennis. Her baseline steadiness tests exactly what ages first: the serve-reliant player's margin for error.
The case for Karolina Pliskova
66% to winPlíšková's serve remains a per-game head start, her 2016 final here is the section's deepest US Open résumé, and her comeback season (21–12) has produced more wins than all but a few seeds. Four career hard-court wins across the net is not a test; it is a formality with a future.
Both cases written 2026-08-28, 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: Karolina Pliskova to advance ✓ RIGHT
“A 2016 finalist's serve and a 21-win season against four career hard-court wins — the widest surface-experience gap in the women's draw.”
Locked 2026-08-28 04:35 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Hanne VandewinkelKarolina PliskovaPlayer 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 2026-08-27.
Storylines
- Plíšková, the 2016 finalist and a former world No. 1, is 34 and unseeded — her 21–12 comeback season is among the best records in the women's field.
- Vandewinkel has four career tour-level hard-court wins — the fewest of any woman in a resolved first-round matchup.
- First meeting: a twelve-year age gap, and 325 hard-court wins of separation.
Head to head
Never met — Plíšková's first US Open final predates Vandewinkel's junior career. The generations exchange first serves on Sunday.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-27.
Court & schedule: Court 12, Sunday 30 August. 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 2026-08-28)
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.