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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 32
Elena Rybakina vs 
Yuliia Starodubtseva
Round of 32
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Elena Rybakina to advance · locked 2026-09-04 05:50 UTCPrediction
The rematch of the biggest win of Starodubtseva's career. She beat Rybakina 3-6 6-1 7-6(4) in the second round at Roland Garros in May, from a set down, and it remains her only win over a top-ten player. Everything else in this match belongs to the second seed. Rybakina won the Australian Open in January and Wimbledon in 2022, is 43-14 for the season and 218-95 on hard courts for her career, and needed 68 minutes and 109 points to beat Jessica Bouzas Maneiro on Thursday night — seven aces to none, 81% of first-serve points won. Hard-court Elo separates them by 460 points. The caveats are real but small: Rybakina retired from her Cincinnati quarter-final against Iga Swiatek on 21 August with a left-leg injury, spent a week off the court, and cancelled a practice session the day before her second round — and then moved as though none of it had happened. Starodubtseva arrives having beaten the 32nd seed Maria Sakkari from a set down and three match points down, cramping by the end of it, into the last 32 here for the first time. Paris was on clay and this is not; a semi-final would make Rybakina world No. 1.
The case for Elena Rybakina
87% to winRybakina is 460 points clear on hard-court Elo, has two majors to Starodubtseva's zero, and beat Bouzas Maneiro in 68 minutes with seven aces to nil. Her career hard-court record is 218-95 against 41-42. Roland Garros was on clay, the surface that flattens her advantages the most; this is the one that magnifies them. She is also three wins from the world No. 1 ranking, which tends to concentrate a player.
The case for Yuliia Starodubtseva
13% to winStarodubtseva has already done this once. She beat Rybakina from a set down at Roland Garros in May, and she has just beaten the 32nd seed from a set down and three match points down, on a day when she hit no aces and 17 winners and won three fewer points than her opponent. She wins matches on other people's mistakes, which is the profile that troubles a big hitter, and Rybakina is two weeks removed from retiring mid-match with a leg injury.
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
Elena RybakinaYuliia StarodubtsevaPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-04.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-04.
The briefing
Storylines
- A rematch of Starodubtseva's win over Rybakina at Roland Garros in May, the biggest of her career.
- Rybakina beat Jessica Bouzas Maneiro in 68 minutes on Thursday night, seven aces to none.
- Starodubtseva beat the 32nd seed Maria Sakkari from a set down and three match points down.
- Rybakina retired from her Cincinnati quarter-final on 21 August with a left-leg injury.
- A semi-final here would take Rybakina to world No. 1 for the first time.
Head to head
One meeting, this May: Starodubtseva won 3-6 6-1 7-6(4) in the Roland Garros round of 64, on clay.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-04.
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 2026-09-04)
Weather: Friday carries a 25% chance of showers and thunderstorms with a high near 81°F, the risk fading through the afternoon, so a delay is possible rather than likely. Friday night is partly cloudy at 13% and 70°F. Saturday is the clean day — sunny, 78°F, 6% — with isolated showers at 16% after dark, and Sunday is mostly sunny at 72°F on 8%. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-04)
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