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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 16
Elena Rybakina vs 
Naomi Osaka
Round of 16
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
My pick: Elena Rybakina to advance · locked 2026-09-06 12:40 UTCPrediction
Two of the biggest hitters in the sport, on the surface that rewards it, with the world No. 1 ranking sitting behind one of them: Rybakina needs the semi-finals to be sure of taking it from Sabalenka even if Sabalenka wins the title. She is playing like it. She beat Yuliia Starodubtseva 7-6(6) 6-3 in 1h52 with twelve aces to one, saved a set point in the tiebreak with one of them, and did it against the player who had knocked her out of Roland Garros in May. Hard-court Elo has her 169 points clear, about 72-28. Osaka's fortnight has been the opposite kind of tennis. She needed three sets to beat Siniakova, three more to beat Mertens, and the Mertens match was as close as a 7-5 third set gets: broken at 2-2, sitting through a changeover with a towel over her head crying, a medical timeout for a left-leg problem she has carried since the grass season, a match point saved against her at 5-4, and a break in the twelfth game on her fourth match point. She converted four of sixteen break points and made 41 unforced errors. "I'm literally shocked that I won this match," she said, and then apologised to the children watching for how she had behaved. Set against that: she is a two-time champion here, she reached the semi-final last year, she beat Gauff in this round in 2025, and in July she beat the world No. 1 at Wimbledon. Rybakina won their only meeting, in Toronto four weeks ago, from 4-2 down in the second. I take Rybakina at close to the rating, because the one thing Osaka cannot afford is a leg that will not let her move, and Rybakina's serve is the shot that finds out.
The case for Elena Rybakina
70% to winRybakina is the second seed, the Australian Open champion, and two wins from the world No. 1 ranking. She beat Sabalenka in the Melbourne final in January, 6-4 4-6 6-4, sealing it with an ace, having beaten Swiatek in the quarter-finals; she has a Stuttgart title, an Indian Wells final and a Toronto final since. Here she has not been troubled, and the Starodubtseva win was both an avenging of her Roland Garros exit and a demonstration: twelve aces, a set point saved in the tiebreak with one, and 82% of her first-serve points won. She beat Osaka in Toronto in August from 4-2 down in the second set, firing eight of her fifteen aces in the decider and saving all four break points she faced.
The case for Naomi Osaka
30% to winOsaka has won this tournament twice and reached the semi-final last year, beating Gauff in this exact round on the way. In July she beat the world No. 1 Sabalenka 6-2 7-6(2) in the Wimbledon fourth round, her first win over a world No. 1 in nearly seven years, and reached a first quarter-final there. She has now played ten matches against Elise Mertens, more than against anyone else, and found a way through a bad one — nine aces, 79% of her first-serve points, and a break of serve to win it rather than the comfort of serving for it. She is the only two-time champion left in the draw, and this is the round and the stadium where she has always been at her most dangerous.
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
Elena RybakinaNaomi OsakaPlayer 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
- Rybakina reaches the world No. 1 ranking by reaching the semi-finals, whatever Sabalenka does from here. She has never been past the fourth round at this tournament.
- Osaka reached the semi-final here last year, losing to Amanda Anisimova 6-7(4) 7-6(3) 6-3 — and beat Coco Gauff 6-3 6-2 in the fourth round on the way.
- Their only previous meeting was the Toronto quarter-final on 11 August: Rybakina won 4-6 7-6(5) 6-4 in 2h33 from 4-2 down in the second, hitting eight of her fifteen aces in the deciding set and saving all four break points she faced.
- Osaka took a medical timeout against Mertens for a left-leg problem: "I wouldn't say it's a huge injury. I would say it's this ongoing problem that I've had since grass season."
- She also apologised on court for her own conduct during the match: "I was very negative on myself, so I'm really sorry about my behavior. For the little kids watching, I'm really sorry."
- Rybakina beat Starodubtseva 7-6(6) 6-3 having lost to her in the Roland Garros second round in May — the biggest win of the Ukrainian's career at the time.
- Four former champions are in the last 16: Sabalenka (2024, 2025), Osaka (2018, 2020), Swiatek (2022) and Gauff (2023). Between them they hold every title here since 2018 bar two.
Head to head
One meeting: the Toronto quarter-final on 11 August 2026, Rybakina 4-6 7-6(5) 6-4 in 2h33 on hard. Osaka broke in the opening game and led 4-2 in the second before Rybakina turned it; Rybakina won 111 points to 107 and hit fifteen aces to three.
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.
