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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 16
Coco Gauff vs Iva Jovic
Round of 16
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My pick: Coco Gauff to advance · locked 2026-09-06 12:40 UTCPrediction
Gauff has won nine matches in a row, the last eight in straight sets, and has not dropped a set in New York. Hard-court Elo says 81-19 and every visible thing about the fortnight agrees with it. The reason this is not a formality is that the fourth round is exactly where Gauff has gone out at this tournament in each of the last two years — to Emma Navarro in 2024 and to Naomi Osaka in 2025 — and that Jovic has already taken her to 2h45 and a match point this season. That was Rome in May, on clay, where Jovic won the first set 7-5, served for the quarter-final at 5-4 in the second, held a match point, and lost 5-7 7-5 6-2 having double-faulted ten times to Gauff's one. The double faults are the whole tactical story here from both directions. Jovic told the press after Wimbledon that she had been living and dying off breaking serve and that her first-serve percentage never rose; Gauff, for her part, leads the entire 2026 tour in double faults with 308, made under half her first serves against Bucșa and won anyway. Jovic is 18, ranked 14th, in her third Slam fourth round of the year, and has just come through 3h03 and seventeen breaks of serve against Alexandra Eala on a crowd that mostly wanted the other player. She is a genuinely good bet to make this long. I still take Gauff, shaded down from the ratings, because a serve that misfires against a fellow returner is survivable and a serve that misfires against the best mover in the sport is not.
The case for Coco Gauff
74% to winGauff is the 2023 champion here, a two-time major winner, and on the best run of her season — nine straight wins, the Cincinnati title on 23 August over Pegula, and three rounds in New York without conceding a set. This is her fifth consecutive second week at her home Slam and her 19th Grand Slam fourth round. The serve that defined the last two seasons is a different shot since she brought in the biomechanist Gavin MacMillan a year ago: against Bucșa she made 27 first serves out of 55 and still won 74% behind the first and 73% behind the second, and took 15 of 22 points at the net. She beat Jovic on clay in May from a set and a match point down, which is the version of this match where the pressure is all on the other side of the net.
The case for Iva Jovic
26% to winJovic is 18 and this is her third Grand Slam fourth round of 2026, after a quarter-final in Melbourne — where she was the youngest American woman in the last eight since Venus Williams in 1998 — and the last 16 at Wimbledon. She was ranked 157th in March 2025 and won her first tour title in Guadalajara that September, the youngest champion on tour since Gauff at Parma in 2021. Against Eala she hit 44 winners to 27 unforced errors on a night when the stadium was not hers, saved break points at 4-2 down in the deciding set, and won it on her second match point. She has already had Gauff at a match point once this year, and she is the fresher of the two in a way that has nothing to do with hours: nobody has worked out how to play her yet.
Both cases written 2026-09-06, 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
Coco GauffIva JovicPlayer 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 2026-09-06.
The briefing
Storylines
- They met once before, in the Rome round of 16 on 11 May: Gauff won 5-7 7-5 6-2 in 2h45 after Jovic had served for the match at 5-4 in the second set and held a match point. Jovic served ten double faults to Gauff's one.
- The fourth round is where Gauff has lost at this tournament in each of the last two years — to Navarro in 2024 and to Osaka in 2025, the latter 6-3 6-2.
- Gauff leads the entire 2026 tour in double faults with 308. The next-highest are Alycia Parks and Jelena Ostapenko on 222.
- Jovic's parents emigrated from the former Yugoslavia after her mother won a green card in the lottery; Serbian was her first language, and Djokovic has been giving her advice since the Australian Open.
- Jovic beat Alexandra Eala 7-5 3-6 7-5 in 3h03 with seventeen breaks of serve in 33 games. "It took losing my earrings, falling literally flat-out on the floor, cuts on my knees, mental breakdowns. It took literally everything."
- Five American women are left — Gauff, Jovic, Pegula, Townsend and Navarro — and this match guarantees one of them a quarter-final.
Head to head
One meeting: the Rome round of 16, 11 May 2026, Gauff 5-7 7-5 6-2 in 2h45 on clay. Jovic took the first set, served for the match at 5-4 in the second and held a match point; Gauff broke back on her third break point of the game and won 105 points to 91. Monday is their first meeting on a hard court.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-06.
Watch: Fourth-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 2026-09-06)
Weather: Today — the front half of the fourth round — is 72°F with a 21% chance of a passing shower, and tonight is mostly clear at 62°F. Labor Day, when the other four fourth rounds are played, is sunny and 77°F with nothing in it, and Monday night is partly cloudy at 66°F. The quarter-final days are drier still: sunny and 79°F Tuesday, mostly sunny and 80°F Wednesday, with the first shower chance of the week returning at 21% late Wednesday night. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-06)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
At this Stage
The Round of 16 is the fourth round, and the point at which a Grand Slam stops being a draw and becomes a tournament you can hold in your head: eight matches, played across Sunday and Monday, and the eight who come through are the quarter-finalists. Everyone still here has won three matches on these courts, so the seedings have stopped being a guide and the form of the fortnight has taken over.
