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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 32
Aryna Sabalenka vs Kamilla Rakhimova — 6-3 6-4
| Aryna Sabalenka✓ | 6 | 6 |
 Kamilla Rakhimova | 3 | 4 |
Final · Friday, September 4, 2026 · Round of 32
Result
Sabalenka broke in the opening game, did not miss a first serve until the seventh, and had the set in 35 minutes. She also stopped play in it — 2-0 up and serving — to speak to her own team and then to the chair umpire Eva Asderaki-Moore: "Someone is smoking weed. Would you mind to… because it's so strong." Asderaki-Moore radioed an official, turned and made a smoking gesture with her fingers, and play went on. Cannabis smoke had drifted in from the neighbouring park all week, mostly onto the outside courts; smoking of any kind is banned on the grounds. Rakhimova, Uzbekistan's No. 1 and the first player from that country in fifteen years to reach a US Open third round, hit back after it — she saved four break points in the second set and led 40-0 serving at 4-4, at which point Sabalenka won five points in a row, broke, and served it out. The top seed was never broken and never faced a break point, hitting 29 winners to 19 unforced errors and ten aces to two. It is her sixteenth consecutive win here and a sixteenth straight fourth round at a major, the first woman to manage that in twenty years, since Lindsay Davenport.
Rows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
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 32
What we know now
Court: Louis Armstrong Stadium
Match length: 1:29
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.
Sabalenka has won fifteen consecutive matches at this tournament, is the two-time defending champion, and has spent 2 hours and 22 minutes on court to reach the third round — 6-2 6-4 over Camila Osorio, then 54 minutes and two games conceded against the qualifier Polina Iatcenko. She is 41-9 for the season and 298-107 on hard courts for her career. Rakhimova has had the better story and the harder work: she beat Barbora Krejcikova 7-6(4) 6-2 in the first round and then took 66 minutes over Oksana Selekhmeteva, holding all eight of her service games without a double fault, and she is into a US Open third round for the first time since 2021. She is also 0-3 against Sabalenka and has taken one set off her, in Washington two years ago on a hard court. The other two were 6-1 6-0 and 6-2 6-2. There is very little here to argue with: the Elo tables have Sabalenka nearly 500 points clear, which is the widest gap left anywhere in the women's draw.
The case for Aryna Sabalenka
94% to winSabalenka has not lost here since 2024, has dropped six games in two rounds, and is the best hard-court player in the world by a distance nobody has closed this season. She has beaten Rakhimova three times and lost one set doing it. On Ashe, in the third round, against a player ranked 91 places below her, there is no version of this where she is not the favourite.
The case for Kamilla Rakhimova
6% to winRakhimova has beaten a Grand Slam champion this week and conceded seven games in two matches while doing it; she is serving as well as she ever has, eight holds from eight without a double fault on Wednesday. She took a set off Sabalenka in Washington in 2024 and pushed it to 6-4 in the third. If the top seed's timing is off for an hour — and 76% first serves against a qualifier is not a test of anything — there is an opening.
Both cases written 2026-09-03, 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: Aryna Sabalenka to advance ✓ RIGHT
“Fifteen straight wins here, a 3-0 head-to-head and the largest Elo gap left in the women's draw.”
Locked 2026-09-03 00:34 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Player 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 2026-09-02.
Storylines
- Sabalenka has won fifteen consecutive matches at the US Open and is the two-time defending champion.
- She has conceded six games in two rounds, including a 54-minute 6-1 6-1 in the second.
- Rakhimova beat Barbora Krejcikova in the first round and has dropped seven games in two matches.
- It is Rakhimova's first US Open third round since 2021.
- Sabalenka leads 3-0; Rakhimova's one set came in Washington in 2024.
Head to head
Sabalenka leads 3-0: 6-1 6-0 in the Roland Garros first round in 2025, 6-2 6-2 in the Roland Garros third round in 2023, and 7-5 4-6 6-4 in the Washington round of 16 in July 2024 — the only set Rakhimova has taken.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-02.
Court & schedule: Louis Armstrong Stadium, Friday 4 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 2026-09-03)
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.