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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 64
Iga Swiatek vs Nadia Podoroska — 6-3 6-2
 Iga Swiatek✓ | 6 | 6 |
 Nadia Podoroska | 3 | 2 |
Final · Thursday, September 3, 2026 · Round of 64
Result
Almost six years after they met in a Roland Garros semi-final, Iga Swiatek and Nadia Podoroska played again, for seventy-one minutes on the Grandstand. Podoroska's only four break points of the match all came in the same game — Swiatek serving for the first set at 5-3 — and she took none of them; Swiatek held for the set, broke to open the second, and went on to 4-1 and 6-2. Swiatek landed 79% of her first serves and won 78% of those points and 73% behind her second, conceding five games for the second match running. Podoroska is 29 and here on a protected ranking, back after more than 400 days out with hip and shoulder injuries and then forearm tendinitis; in 2020 she became the first woman in the Open Era to reach a Roland Garros semi-final from qualifying, and on Monday she beat Simona Waltert for her first US Open main-draw win in six visits. "I'm here with better feeling than any other Grand Slam this year," said Swiatek, whose third round is her twenty-seventh in a row at a major.
Iga SwiatekRows 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
Court: Grandstand
Match length: 1:11
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.
Swiatek, and the interest is in whether Podoroska can make it long. The 2022 champion held all nine of her service games against Wang Xiyu, conceded no break points at all, landed 74% of her first serves and won 80% of them, and was off Louis Armstrong in 88 minutes. She arrived off the Toronto title and a Cincinnati semi-final and has 240 career hard-court wins against 67 losses. Podoroska is in the draw on a protected ranking as Laura Siegemund's replacement, is the world No. 449, and had not won a Grand Slam main-draw match in two years and eight months until Monday, when she beat Simona Waltert 4-6 7-6(5) 6-3 by six points across 2 hours 48 minutes — a win built on Waltert's 63 unforced errors rather than her own 15 winners. The last time these two played, Podoroska was in the Roland Garros semi-finals as a qualifier and lost 6-2 6-1. Six years on, she is the only South American left in the draw and Swiatek has won six majors.
The case for Iga Swiatek
94% to winSwiatek is a six-time major champion who won this tournament in 2022, is 240-67 on hard courts, and gave an opponent ranked 80th in the world nothing at all on Monday — nine holds, no break points faced, one double fault. She has beaten Podoroska before, at a Grand Slam, for the loss of three games, and comes in on the back of a WTA 1000 title in Toronto.
The case for Nadia Podoroska
6% to winPodoroska has already done the improbable once this week: ranked 449th, in the draw only because someone else withdrew, and a set down to a player 360 places above her, she won anyway. She was a Roland Garros semi-finalist in 2020 and the game that got her there has not disappeared, it has been injured. Swiatek's opener was cheap enough that she has not yet had to solve anything, and 2 hours 48 minutes of grinding is exactly the kind of match Podoroska will want.
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: Iga Swiatek to advance ✓ RIGHT
“A six-time major champion who has not been broken this week against the world No. 449, who she has already beaten at a Slam.”
Locked 2026-09-01 01:20 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Iga SwiatekNadia PodoroskaPlayer 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 2026-08-31.
Storylines
- Swiatek held all nine of her service games against Wang Xiyu and did not face a break point in the match.
- Podoroska is in the main draw on a protected ranking as Laura Siegemund's replacement and is the world No. 449.
- Monday's 4-6 7-6(5) 6-3 over Simona Waltert was Podoroska's first Grand Slam main-draw win in two years and eight months; she won it by six points, 111 to 105.
- Their only meeting was the 2020 Roland Garros semi-final, which Swiatek won 6-2 6-1 on her way to the title.
- Podoroska is the only South American left in the women's singles draw.
Head to head
One meeting, in the 2020 Roland Garros semi-final, which Swiatek won 6-2 6-1 en route to her first major title.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-31.
Court & schedule: Grandstand, Thursday 3 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.