US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 64
Qinwen Zheng vs 
Yulia Putintseva
Round of 64
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Qinwen Zheng to advance · locked 2026-09-01 23:05 UTCPrediction
Zheng, and the ranking beside her name is the least useful number in this match. She is here as a qualifier at No. 121, which is what a season interrupted looks like rather than what she is: a US Open quarter-finalist in 2024 and 102-54 on hard courts for her career. Putintseva has beaten her twice, both on clay, one of them a retirement, and neither tells you much about a hard court. What Putintseva does bring is Tuesday. She took out the 12th seed by refusing to hit a ball hard — lobs, slices, drop shots, a fastest serve of 100 mph — and Bencic double-faulted nine times trying to make something happen. That is exactly the pattern that has troubled Zheng, whose game is built on power and who came from a set down against a 16-year-old to get here. This is the closest of the second-round matches in this quarter, and the winner is whoever is more comfortable with a rally that has no shape.
The case for Qinwen Zheng
60% to winZheng has been to the quarter-finals of this tournament and is 102-54 on hard courts; Putintseva is 226-216. A ranking of 121 and a route through qualifying reflect a season of fourteen wins and thirteen losses, not the ceiling. She also came through a first round she was losing, beating Kristina Liutova 4-6 6-3 6-1, which is the kind of match a player in her position needed.
The case for Yulia Putintseva
40% to winPutintseva leads the head-to-head 2-0 and has just done the hardest thing in the draw's bottom half — beaten the 12th seed, from a set down, by giving her nothing to hit. Her method travels: junk, height, drop shots, and a willingness to stay out there for two hours and fifty-one minutes. Against a power player finding her way back through qualifying, that is a genuinely awkward assignment, and Putintseva has made the quarter-finals here herself.
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.
Tale of the tape
Qinwen ZhengYulia PutintsevaPlayer 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 2026-09-01.
The briefing
Storylines
- Putintseva leads the head-to-head 2-0, both meetings on clay: Roland Garros 2023, and a Madrid match in 2024 that Zheng retired from at 5-7 0-2.
- Putintseva beat the 12th seed Belinda Bencic 4-6 7-5 6-3, with a fastest serve of 100 mph and no ace conceded to her opponent.
- Zheng is in the draw as a qualifier at No. 121, having reached the quarter-finals of this tournament in 2024.
- Zheng came from a set down to beat the 16-year-old Kristina Liutova 4-6 6-3 6-1 in the first round.
- Both women have a US Open quarter-final as their best result here — Zheng in 2024, Putintseva in 2020.
Head to head
Two meetings, both on clay: Putintseva won 6-3 4-6 6-2 in the Roland Garros second round in 2023, and led 7-5 2-0 in Madrid in 2024 when Zheng retired. They have never met on a hard court.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-01.
Watch: Second-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 2026-09-01)
Weather: Tonight is the last of the wet weather and the worst of it: showers and thunderstorms at 84% before the sky clears to mostly cloudy on a low near 71°F. Wednesday is the break the tournament has been waiting for — near 75°F on an 18% chance of a shower — though storms creep back after dark at 65%. Thursday is the unsettled one, warm at 81°F with showers and thunderstorms likely at 65% and 53% overnight. Friday turns: near 82°F and mostly sunny on 10%, the first clean day of the fortnight, with Saturday better still. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-01)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
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
Round of 32