US Open, September 6: Rybakina's Paris ghost, Osaka's nerves and the friendship that ends on Ashe

The third round of the US Open women's draw offers only three matches on this slate, and every one of them carries something heavier than a scoreline. Elena Rybakina has to face the woman who beat her at Roland Garros in May, on an ankle that kept her off court for a week in late August. Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, meets Elise Mertens, who has the unglamorous gift of never giving an opponent the same ball twice. And on the biggest court in the sport, two friends and former doubles partners will spend two hours trying to hurt each other from the baseline.

What makes the day worth sitting up for is how little of it feels settled. Rybakina is a heavy favourite who has already lost this matchup once. Osaka is the better player who keeps arguing with herself mid-match. Jovic has won both meetings with Eala, yet neither came on the surface where Eala has spent her best summer. Here is what I want to talk about, in the order it happens:

• 21:00 — Starodubtseva — Rybakina
• 23:00 — Osaka — Mertens
• 23:00 — Jovic — Eala

Times are UTC.

Yuliia Starodubtseva — Elena Rybakina

They have met once, and Starodubtseva won it: 3-6 6-1 7-6(4) in the second round at Roland Garros in May, a match she survived by refusing to accept it was gone. "I knew I could compete, I knew I could win this match," she said afterwards (Roland Garros). That was clay, where a Rybakina forehand has to be hit twice before it counts. New York is the opposite arrangement — first strike, short points, and very little sympathy for a player who wants to extend rallies.

Both arrive with a question mark attached to the body. Rybakina came into the tournament off an ankle problem picked up in Cincinnati, bad enough that, in her own words, "for a couple of days, it was painful to even walk" (US Open). Her two matches here — 6-3 6-2 past wild card Thea Frodin, 6-2 6-4 past Jessica Bouzas Maneiro — have been short and controlled, and when she wobbled serving out the second she answered with aggressive returns rather than fear. Starodubtseva, meanwhile, went to the edge of the cliff against Maria Sakkari, lost the first set 1-6, saved match points, and came back 7-6(4) 6-2 with cramps arriving near the finish. Magnificent, and expensive.

The numbers underline the gap the digest keeps hinting at: Rybakina has won 81% of her hard-court matches this year, Starodubtseva exactly half, and the Ukrainian's clay record is comfortably her best. Her route is narrow but real — deep returns through the middle, no premature changes of direction, and make Rybakina move sideways to test that ankle. She cannot afford another 1-6 opening set; against Sakkari she got away with it, against the world number two she will not.

Naomi Osaka — Elise Mertens

This is the ninth meeting between them, and the recent chapters have all read the same way. Osaka beat Mertens 6-1 6-2 in Toronto in August and 6-3 6-3 on grass at Bad Homburg in June; Mertens' last win came in Toronto in 2024, plus Indian Wells earlier that year. Nine matches is enough history for both to know exactly what is coming: Osaka wants height, time and a clean look through the court, and Mertens exists to deny all three.

Osaka has not played a tidy match yet in New York. Anastasia Zakharova took her to two tie-breaks, 7-6(6) 7-6, and against Katerina Siniakova she was cruising at 6-2 before losing the second 5-7 to her own overthinking, then reset for 6-1 in the decider. That reset is the encouraging part. "You can draw from your memory bank for each specific situation you need to resolve," she said of getting out of trouble (Punto de Break) — and in Flushing Meadows her memory bank is better stocked than almost anyone's, with 31 wins here against eight losses.

Mertens has done the professional thing all week and it has cost her. Her opener against Kaitlin Quevedo came after the weather scrambled the schedule and left her barely time to eat: "I had to find my rhythm," she said afterwards (Star Sport TV). She won it 6-4 6-4, then survived Maria Timofeeva 6-2 7-6(5), and she has been adding doubles on top of a deep Monterrey run. Her tennis is built on making the opponent move before she hits and on removing pace at the right moment, but that plan needs fresh legs to hold for two sets.

Iva Jovic — Alexandra Eala

Friends, former doubles partners, and now the last two people either of them wanted to see in this half of the draw. Jovic has won both official meetings this season — 6-4 6-2 in the Roland Garros first round in May, then 6-2 6-2 on grass at Queen's in June — and neither was close. But neither was on hard court, which is where Eala has done nearly all her best work: 69% of her matches won on the surface this year, against a much thinner return on clay.

Jovic has taken the longer road here. Magdalena Frech dragged her through a stop-start baseline match broken up by rain before she won 7-5 6-3, and Francesca Jones made her work through several match points before the 6-4 6-4 was finished. Solid, unspectacular, and useful for a match that will have emotional friction in it. Eala has been sharper: 6-1 6-2 over Mary Stoiana, then 6-1 6-4 past Oleksandra Oliynykova, where the real test came when Oliynykova removed the pace and started floating balls. Eala did not get irritated or rush — she accepted the new rhythm and kept the initiative, which is the sort of small detail that tells you more than the scoreline.

The tactical question is whether Jovic's compact backhand can keep absorbing Eala's left-handed crosscourt without giving up court position — that has been the pattern in both previous meetings. Eala's answer has to be variety: change the opening direction, use the lefty serve to draw short returns, and never let Jovic settle into a clean, repeating exchange. There is a crowd factor too, and it cuts both ways. Jovic has the home support in New York, Eala has a Filipino following that turns her matches into something closer to a carnival, and Jovic is the one who would rather this stayed a quiet, orderly match. "On the court, it's fair game, winner takes all—we go for it," Jovic said of playing a friend (US Open). Eala, for her part, called Jovic "an amazing player, young, very talented and very intelligent" (Tennis Up To Date) — polite, accurate, and entirely beside the point once the first ball is struck.

This is the murkiest match of the three and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The head-to-head says Jovic and says it twice, but the surface says Eala, and the 22-game total with both sides near even money reflects a bookmaker who is equally unsure. My instinct is that Eala's hard-court improvement since June is the more significant of the two trends, which makes the +1 game handicap the tidier side of a coin-flip. What it hinges on is the first four games: if Eala gets to serve out of trouble early and keeps the exchanges untidy, she wins; if Jovic finds those repetitive crosscourt patterns straight away, the previous two matches repeat themselves.

Two ankles, one friendship and a champion arguing with herself

The three questions I want answered are simple ones. Does Rybakina's ankle hold up when someone finally makes her run sideways for an hour? Does Osaka go a whole match without a conversation with her own serve? And can Eala finally solve a friend who has read her twice already this year, now that the ball is bouncing the way she likes it?

My own leanings are above, hedged where the picture deserves hedging — the Jovic–Eala match genuinely could go either way, and I would rather say so than dress up a guess. The specific calls on all three of these belong to the AI cappers, who lay them out on the match pages with numbers attached.