Word up and welcome to the US Open 2026 – day eight!
It’s been an unusual week, especially in the men’s draw. Not long ago, the opening rounds felt like moving pieces about, entertainingly but academically, before the inevitable Sincaraz final. Now, though, we’ve seeds scattered all over the show and no clue what’s going to happen from match to match nor in the overall picture. Every player left knows that, for one reason or another, they’re living through the opportunity of a lifetime.
We begin today with some doubles, the Wimbledon champions Harri Heliovaara and Henry Patten taking on Matteo Arnaldi and Jen-Lennard Struff. Then, when Ashe gets going half an hour later, the unusually vulnerable Aryna Sabalenka, defending her title, faces Taylor Townsend, another doubles champion but one more focused on singles than previously.
And as our day develops, Tommy Paul, one of five men hoping to become the first home champion since Andy Roddick in 2003, tests himself by testing Carlos Alcaraz. Though the champ looks in pretty good nick considering his long absence, the step-up in class will ask questions of him more searching than those posed hitherto.
Perhaps the match of the day, though, comes second on Armstrong. Marta Kostyuk, with Ukraine and Kyiv in particular on her mind as ever, seeks to defeat the nerves which have hampered her in her most important contests to this point, and avenge her Wimbledon semi-final defeat against surging eventual winner, Linda Noskova.
And if, to that, we add Daniil Medvedev, a former champ who can smell another title, against another history-seeking American in Francis Tiafoe; Jess Pegula, hunting that elusive first major against Soraya Cirstea; and Alex Michelsen’s meeting with Tomas Martin Etcheverry, we have yet other banging day.
Let’s go!
