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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 16
Jessica Pegula vs Sorana Cirstea — 6-3 6-4
 Jessica Pegula✓ | 6 | 6 |
 Sorana Cirstea | 3 | 4 |
Final · Sunday, September 6, 2026 · Round of 16
Result
Eleven of the nineteen games went against serve, which is not what 6-3 6-4 looks like from a distance. Pegula won the first thirteen points of the match and then landed 46% of her first serves for the rest of it. She went 0-40 down in the sixth game and saved all three, the second with an ace; was broken serving for the first set at 5-2, on a double fault; and needed a fifth set point to close it. Cirstea saved four break points at 1-4 in the second, one with an ace and one at the end of a 29-stroke rally, the only rally over twenty shots all night. Then came four consecutive breaks, Pegula broken again from 0-40 while serving for the match, and Cirstea saving two of three match points with backhand winners. It was Cirstea's last Grand Slam match. She is 36, in her twentieth season and her announced farewell year, and she arrived at it ranked 17th — a career high she set this May, when she became the oldest player in WTA history to enter the top twenty for the first time. The two talked at the net a long while. "I don't know if you're still going to play next year," Pegula said she told her, "but you're playing great."
Jessica PegulaRows 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: Louis Armstrong Stadium
Match length: 1:25
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.
They played this match three weeks ago. Pegula won it 6-2 4-6 7-5 in the Cincinnati round of 16, which is both the reason to pick her and the reason not to be comfortable about it: two of the three sets were close, and it is the only one of their two tour-level meetings that went the distance. On the raw numbers this is a mismatch — Pegula is ranked third to Cîrstea's seventeenth, is 47-13 for the season, and holds a career hard-court record of 257-118 against a 262-232 built over nearly a hundred more matches. Her hard-court Elo is 155 points clear, which is a shade over seventy per cent before anything else is considered. What complicates it is the shape of the week. Cîrstea has not dropped a set — 6-3 6-0, 6-2 7-5, and then 6-3 6-3 against the 19th seed Jasmine Paolini in seventy-five minutes — and she is playing at a career-high level at 36, rising to No. 15 next week in the season she had announced as her last. Pegula, who had conceded no more than three games in any of her first four sets, lost the opener 6-1 to Leylah Fernandez on Friday and needed two hours eleven minutes to get out of it, taking all three of the break points she saw. That is a top-three player finding a way rather than a top-three player in control, and Cîrstea returns better than Fernandez does. But Pegula has been the steadier hard-court player for four years, she was runner-up on this court in 2024, and she has now beaten Cîrstea on clay and on hard without ever losing to her. Pegula, in three.
The case for Jessica Pegula
70% to winPegula is 2-0 against Cîrstea and beat her on a hard court three weeks ago in Cincinnati. She is ranked third in the world to Cîrstea's seventeenth, is 47-13 this season, and her career hard-court record of 257-118 is a winning percentage the Romanian's 262-232 does not approach. She was the runner-up here in 2024 and knows exactly what this stadium asks of her. Friday was her worst set of the fortnight and she still won, converting every one of the three break points she was given — the mark of a player whose floor is high enough that a bad hour does not cost her the match.
The case for Sorana Cirstea
30% to winCîrstea has not lost a set, and the last of the three was against a two-time Grand Slam finalist she dismissed in seventy-five minutes with seven aces and five breaks of serve. At 36 she is about to reach a career-high No. 15, having climbed from outside the top 70 in a year, and she reached the quarter-finals at Roland-Garros this season as well as the last eight here in 2023. Her 262 career hard-court wins are more than Pegula's. The Cincinnati match three weeks ago was a three-setter decided 7-5 in the third, so the gap between them on this surface is one break of serve wide, not the ranking's width — and Pegula needed three sets on Friday against a returner Cîrstea can out-hit.
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.
My locked pick: Jessica Pegula to advance ✓ RIGHT
“2-0 up including a hard-court win three weeks ago, and 155 points of hard-court Elo clear (≈71%); shaded a point toward Cîrstea for a set-free week against Pegula's three-set Friday.”
Locked 2026-09-04 19:10 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Jessica PegulaSorana CirsteaPlayer 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 2026-09-04.
Storylines
- They met three weeks ago in the Cincinnati round of 16 and Pegula won 6-2 4-6 7-5 — the only one of their two tour-level meetings to go three sets.
- Cîrstea has not dropped a set: 6-3 6-0 over Julia Grabher, 6-2 7-5 over Diane Parry, and 6-3 6-3 over the 19th seed Jasmine Paolini.
- Pegula had conceded no more than three games in any of her first four sets before Leylah Fernandez took Friday's opener 6-1 off her.
- Cîrstea rises to a career-high No. 15 next week, at 36, in a season she had announced as her last.
- Neither has won a Grand Slam: Pegula was runner-up here in 2024, and Cîrstea's best New York run is the 2023 quarter-final.
Head to head
Two meetings, both to Pegula: Madrid in 2021 on clay, 7-6(5) 6-3, and the Cincinnati round of 16 three weeks ago on a hard court, 6-2 4-6 7-5.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-04.
Court & schedule: Louis Armstrong Stadium, Sunday 6 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 2026-09-05)
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.