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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 64
Jasmine Paolini vs Lucrezia Stefanini — 6-4 6-1
 Jasmine Paolini✓ | 6 | 6 |
| Lucrezia Stefanini | 4 | 1 |
Final · Wednesday, September 2, 2026 · Round of 64
Result
Jasmine Paolini reached New York without a hard-court match all summer — a left-foot problem cost her Toronto and Cincinnati, and the US Open was her first tournament since the Wimbledon quarter-finals — and had laboured through three sets against Veronika Erjavec in the first round. She started the all-Tuscan derby badly too, broken to love in the opening game on two forehand errors. Lucrezia Stefanini, ranked 119th and through qualifying to her first US Open main draw, was level at 3-3 before Paolini broke in the ninth game and, serving for the set, went 15-40 down and saved both. The second set was one-way: Stefanini held the opening game and won nothing after it, broken in the third on a return winner off a second serve, the set gone in twenty-nine minutes. Stefanini landed seventy-eight per cent of her first serves and won forty-seven per cent of those points. Paolini, working again with the coach Marc López, hit twenty-one winners to ten and took six of nine break points. Sorana Cîrstea is next.
Jasmine PaoliniRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
The Round of 64 halves the draw again: 32 women's matches across Wednesday and Thursday, every one of them between players who have already won here this week. The seeds who came through the opening round now meet opponents with form behind them rather than a ranking.
Round of 128
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.
Paolini, in an all-Italian second round that is less even than the shared nationality makes it sound. The 19th seed is No. 21 in the world, a two-time Grand Slam finalist in 2024 and an Olympic doubles champion, and she owns the only meeting between them — 6-4 7-5 at Courmayeur in October 2021, on a hard court. Stefanini is 28, ranked No. 119, and had never played a US Open main draw before this week; she is here on the back of a real win, 6-3 4-6 6-1 over Dayana Yastremska. Paolini's own first round was closer than it should have been — she lost the second set to Veronika Erjavec before winning 6-3 3-6 6-4 — and a 16–14 season is not the record of a player in command of her form. But across a match the difference in level tends to show: 145–117 on hard courts against 46–43, and a career of the biggest stages against a first appearance at this one.
The case for Jasmine Paolini
74% to winPaolini has been to two Grand Slam finals — Roland Garros and Wimbledon in 2024 — and won Olympic doubles gold with Sara Errani the same summer. She is nearly a hundred ranking places above her opponent, holds the only head-to-head, and has the deeper hard-court record at 145–117. Her fourth round here in 2024 is further than Stefanini has been at any US Open, because Stefanini has never been in one until now.
The case for Lucrezia Stefanini
26% to winStefanini has already beaten the more decorated player once this week, coming back to take Dayana Yastremska 6-3 4-6 6-1 in the first US Open main draw of her career, at 28. Paolini needed three sets herself against Veronika Erjavec and is 16–14 on the season, a long way from the run that took her to two major finals two summers ago. Their only meeting is nearly five years old. And in an all-Italian match the familiarity runs both ways.
Both cases written 2026-08-31, 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: Jasmine Paolini to advance ✓ RIGHT
“The only head-to-head, a hundred ranking places and a 145–117 hard-court record against a first-time main-draw entrant.”
Locked 2026-08-31 03:00 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Jasmine PaoliniLucrezia StefaniniPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-02.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-30.
Storylines
- An all-Italian second round. Their one previous meeting was at Courmayeur in October 2021, which Paolini won 6-4 7-5.
- Stefanini, 28 and ranked No. 119, is playing her first US Open main draw; she beat Dayana Yastremska 6-3 4-6 6-1 to get here.
- Paolini was runner-up at Roland Garros and at Wimbledon in 2024, and won Olympic doubles gold with Sara Errani that summer.
- Barbora Krejcikova, who beat Paolini in that 2024 Wimbledon final, went out in the first round here to Kamilla Rakhimova.
Head to head
One meeting, on a hard court: Paolini won 6-4 7-5 in the Round of 16 at Courmayeur in October 2021.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-30.
Court & schedule: Court 5, Wednesday 2 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 2026-09-02)
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.