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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 32
Mirra Andreeva vs 
Nikola Bartunkova
Round of 32
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Mirra Andreeva to advance · locked 2026-09-04 00:10 UTCPrediction
Andreeva won the first set against Eva Lys in twenty minutes and the match in 63, which is the shortest completed match either of these players has been involved in this fortnight. She is 19, the fifth seed, ranked fifth, 42-14 for the season, and this year's Roland Garros champion — her first major, won in June. Her best US Open result is the third round, which she has now reached again. Bartunkova is 20 and ranked 34th, up from No. 266 two years ago, and she is playing her first US Open main draw; she beat Mayar Sherif 6-1 6-2 and then came from a set down against the 39-year-old Tatjana Maria, winning ten of the fifteen games after the first-set tiebreak and finishing with an ace. What was striking about that match was how much of it she played at the net — 34 points won from 51 approaches, more than any woman in the draw has attempted in a match this week — and 46 winners in three sets. She is a genuinely awkward opponent. But this is a 184-point Elo gap and a first meeting, and Andreeva has lost twice on a hard court since Wimbledon.
The case for Mirra Andreeva
76% to winA Grand Slam champion at 19, ranked fifth, 69-32 on hard courts for a career that is barely three years old, and coming off a match she won 6-0 6-2 in an hour. Andreeva's return is the best shot in this match: she broke Lys six times from nine chances and won 28 points on her serve. Bartunkova has never played a main draw here and has never faced anyone in the world's top ten at a major.
The case for Nikola Bartunkova
24% to winBartunkova has climbed 232 places in two years and won 113 matches on the smaller circuits doing it, and she has just beaten a former Wimbledon semi-finalist by attacking the net 51 times. Andreeva has never played her, has no pattern to fall back on, and served four double faults and won 43% of her second-serve points on Thursday — numbers that were irrelevant against Lys and would not be against someone hitting 46 winners.
Both cases written 2026-09-04, 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
Player vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-03.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-03.
The briefing
Storylines
- Andreeva won her first major at Roland Garros this year, at 19.
- She beat Eva Lys 6-0 6-2 in 63 minutes, taking the first set in twenty.
- Bartunkova is playing her first US Open main draw and has climbed from No. 266 to No. 34 in two years.
- She beat the 39-year-old Tatjana Maria from a set down, winning 34 of 51 points at the net.
- First meeting; Andreeva's best US Open result is the third round, reached in 2025 and again now.
Head to head
They have never played each other, at any level. Andreeva is 19 and Bartunkova 20, and their careers have run on different circuits until this season.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-03.
Watch: Third-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 2026-09-03)
Weather: Tonight carries a 29% chance of showers and thunderstorms before 2 a.m., mostly cloudy with a low near 74°F, which is the night session's only worry. Friday has improved sharply: the afternoon forecast had it at 46% and it is now a 21% slight chance after 2 p.m., mostly sunny, high near 83°F easing to 81°F, with the same 21% before 8 p.m. and then clearing. Saturday is the clean day — mostly sunny, 79°F, 3% — and Sunday holds at 75°F on 12%. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-03)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
At this Stage
The Round of 32 is the third round, and the last one before a Grand Slam draw becomes a small tournament: sixteen women's matches across Friday and Saturday leave sixteen players standing, every one of them having won twice on these courts. This is the round where the seeding chart stops doing any work — from here on, whoever is left is who you play.
Round of 64
Round of 16