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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 16
Anna Kalinskaya vs Emma Navarro — 6-4 6-2
 Emma Navarro✓ | 6 | 6 |
| Anna Kalinskaya | 4 | 2 |
Final · Sunday, September 6, 2026 · Round of 16
Result
Nine games, nine holds, and not a break point either way — Navarro dropped four points on serve in the whole of the first set. Then Kalinskaya served at 4-5, went from 15-0 to 15-40 on consecutive double faults, and lost the set on a backhand into the net. The second set was decided in its first game, sixteen points and four deuces long, in which Kalinskaya held three break points and Navarro saved all three and finished with an ace. Navarro won four in a row from there, saving two more break points at 40-15 down in the fifth — the second, again, with an ace — and breaking in the sixth on Kalinskaya's ninth double fault. Kalinskaya broke back to love at 2-5 with three winners and was broken again immediately. She hit more winners than Navarro, 17 to 15, and lost by fourteen points: 32 unforced errors to 10 is the entire match. Navarro is back in a US Open quarter-final two years after reaching the semi-finals here, a run that came apart this spring — she fell to 39th, withdrew from her own family's tournament in Charleston, and took two months away with a thyroid problem. "It feels good to be back on Ashe," she said, at five to eleven at night. "We're working the night shift."
Rows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
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.
Round of 32
What we know now
Court: Arthur Ashe Stadium
Match length: 1:21
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.
This quarter of the draw lost both of its top-ten seeds inside a day and the two women who took them out drew each other. Navarro beat the seventh seed Karolina Muchova 6-3 7-5 — the only straight-sets win either of them has managed all week — and hours later Kalinskaya beat the ninth seed Elina Svitolina 6-3 2-6 6-3 in a match in which thirteen of the twenty-six games went against serve. The head-to-head is Kalinskaya's, 2-0, and the meeting that matters is recent: Doha in February, 7-5 2-6 6-2 on a hard court, the same three-set shape she has produced twice this week. Her hard-court Elo is 107 points clear, which is about sixty-five per cent, and she is the higher seed, the higher-ranked player and the one with the better season record. What argues the other way is New York specifically. Navarro was a semi-finalist here two years ago and is playing in front of her own crowd; Kalinskaya had never been past the third round at this tournament before Friday night. And Kalinskaya's route has been ragged — she won on Friday with no aces, fourteen double faults and forty unforced errors, and needed three sets against Xinyu Wang before that. Navarro's serve is the smaller weapon but the steadier one, and she has beaten a top-ten player without losing a set. The pick is Kalinskaya on the record between them and on the surface numbers, but this is the closest of the eight fourth-round matches on paper, and a third set looks close to certain.
The case for Anna Kalinskaya
63% to winKalinskaya has won both meetings, including a hard-court three-setter in Doha in February, and she is the higher seed, ranked 23rd to Navarro's 27th, with a 27-18 season against 23-18 and a career hard-court record of 155-107 against 70-55. Her hard-court Elo is 107 points clear. She has just beaten a top-ten seed on Louis Armstrong at night — a first US Open fourth round that completes the set of second weeks at all four majors — and she did it on a night when nothing was working: no aces, fourteen double faults, and she still took the last four games, the final two without conceding a point. A player who wins like that is not going to be talked out of a match by a bad half-hour.
The case for Emma Navarro
37% to winNavarro is the only one of the two who has beaten a top-ten seed in straight sets this week — 6-3 7-5 over the seventh seed Karolina Muchova — and she is the only one who has been this deep in New York before, reaching the semi-finals in 2024. She is American, this is the second Sunday of her home Grand Slam, and the Ashe crowd has been decisive here before. She has also had the harder education getting here: a 7-6(6) 6-7(1) 6-3 opener against Lois Boisson and a set down against Caty McNally. Kalinskaya arrives off a 1 hour 52 minute breakfest in which she made forty unforced errors and double-faulted fourteen times; against a returner as clean as Navarro that is not a serve that survives.
Both cases written 2026-09-05, 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: Anna Kalinskaya to advance ✗ WRONG
“2-0 up including a hard-court three-setter this February, and 107 points of hard-court Elo clear (≈65%); shaded two points to Navarro for the 2024 semi-final here and the home crowd.”
Locked 2026-09-05 12:50 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 2026-09-05.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-05.
Storylines
- Both top-ten seeds in this section went out within a day of each other — Navarro beat the seventh seed Karolina Muchova, Kalinskaya the ninth seed Elina Svitolina — and the two who beat them now play each other.
- Kalinskaya leads 2-0, from a Doha hard-court three-setter in February 2026 and a San Diego qualifying round in 2022.
- Friday's win over Svitolina was Kalinskaya's first US Open fourth round, completing a set of second weeks at all four majors.
- Navarro was a US Open semi-finalist in 2024; it is much the best Grand Slam result either woman has.
- Kalinskaya beat Svitolina with no aces and fourteen double faults, in a match where only thirteen of twenty-six games were held.
Head to head
Two meetings, both to Kalinskaya: a San Diego qualifying round in 2022, 6-4 7-6(3), and the Doha round of 32 in February 2026, 7-5 2-6 6-2. Both on hard courts.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-05.
Court & schedule: Arthur Ashe Stadium, Sunday 6 September in the night session. 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 2026-09-05)
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.