US Open, 7 September: Osaka meets Rybakina again, and Zheng walks back into Swiatek's worst memory

The fourth round is where a major stops being a parade and starts being a sorting machine. Monday in New York gives four matches and almost no filler: two former champions of this tournament on the same court in the evening, a six-time major winner drawn against the one opponent who has taken something irreplaceable from her, and two teenagers who arrived in the second week by very different roads. Nobody here is playing for a paycheque.

What links the day is fatigue and what it does to people. Naomi Osaka has spent three matches surviving; Qinwen Zheng has spent a qualifying draw and four deciders proving she still exists; Iva Jovic left more than three hours of herself on Ashe against Alexandra Eala. Across the net from each of them stands somebody who has been sleeping well. Here are the four I want to talk through:

15:00 — Mirra Andreeva — Anastasia Potapova
15:30 — Iga Swiatek — Qinwen Zheng
18:30 — Naomi Osaka — Elena Rybakina
23:00 — Iva Jovic — Cori Gauff

Times are UTC.

Mirra Andreeva — Anastasia Potapova

This is the friendly-looking match with the sharpest edges. Andreeva has yet to drop a set here, and the way she handled Nikola Bartunkova told me more than the 6-0 6-2 she handed Eva Lys: the Czech found variety in the second set, the rhythm turned, and Andreeva simply waited rather than swinging harder, then produced her cleanest tennis in the tie-break at 7-6(5). At nineteen she already treats a bad ten minutes as weather, not a verdict.

Potapova arrives with the best win of anyone on the day, and she got it by refusing to play the obvious match. Against Amanda Anisimova she defended, changed direction and let the American's aggression turn brittle, winning 6-2 7-5, and when Anisimova surged as Potapova served it out, she went back to the same patient plan instead of panicking. The awkward part is that patience is exactly what Andreeva punishes: she has beaten Potapova three times out of four, including 6-1 6-3 in the second round here last August, and she came back from a set down to take the Linz final in April, 1-6 6-4 6-3. Potapova's one win came in Monastir in 2022, in a different life.

There is also the surface question. Potapova's clay season has been genuinely good this year, her hard-court year rather less so, and Andreeva's hard-court numbers sit comfortably above hers. Potapova's route is to take time away immediately, attack the second ball and change pace before Andreeva does — because once Andreeva starts moving her diagonally, with the drop shot in the mix, the match stops being a hitting contest and becomes an examination.

I expect Andreeva to win, and the market's 1.168 is not wrong about that. The margin is another matter: Potapova hits a big ball early and holds serve in bursts, and a −5.5 games handicap on Andreeva at 1.995 asks for something close to what she did last year in New York. I lean towards two sets for Andreeva with one of them close, and the 20-game total looking beatable rather than comfortable.

Iga Swiatek — Qinwen Zheng

Ranked 121st, out of qualifying, Zheng has played five matches to get here and won four of them in deciders. The Madison Keys match was barely tennis by the end: 1-6 down, then a tie-break, then 5-0 down in the third with a match point against her, and out the other side at 7-6(3) 7-5. "Hard work finally pays off. And the second thing is, never give up, because things can happen. And the third is, okay, miracles exist," she said afterwards (US Open). She is late in a comeback from chronic right-elbow trouble and surgery, and she has spoken about almost having to relearn how to compete.

Swiatek has had the quieter fortnight, though her third round was not the stroll the scoreline suggests. Marie Bouzkova dragged rallies out, unsettled the serve and pushed her to 7-6(3) 7-6, and Swiatek's own account of it was refreshingly unglamorous: "I just wanted to be solid and play one more ball in and not aim too much. It was really tricky," as WTA reported. She left that match sounding pleased to have been squeezed, which is usually a bad sign for whoever comes next.

The eight previous meetings are lopsided in Swiatek's favour — the last of them 6-3 6-3 in the Indian Wells quarterfinals in March 2025 — and yet the one that will sit in the room is the Paris Olympic semifinal of August 2024, when Zheng won 6-2 7-5 on clay and took away the gold medal Swiatek had all but framed. That is the intrigue: whether Zheng's old belief has genuinely come back, and whether Swiatek needs to prove anything to herself about that afternoon. Tactically, Swiatek's job is depth on the second ball; anything short and Zheng plants her feet and swings first.

I think Swiatek wins this, and the emotional angle is doing more work in the previews than it will on court. Zheng's elbow has cost her matches, not her forehand, but five matches of nothing but three-setters is a physical bill that arrives eventually. My picture is Swiatek in two, one set tight and one set clear — the −5 handicap at 1.86 looks like the honest reading, though a fresh Zheng first-strike day would blow it up in half an hour.

Naomi Osaka — Elena Rybakina

Osaka's fortnight has been thrilling and slightly held together with tape. She won her opener from two commanding positions she nearly gave back, 7-6(6) 7-6 over Anastasia Zakharova; she lost a set to Katerina Siniakova before flattening her in the third; and against Elise Mertens she led by a set and a break, started pushing instead of dictating, needed treatment on the Achilles that has bothered her since the grass season, missed several chances to finish and eventually won 6-3 3-6 7-5 because Mertens missed first. "I think I just want to have a fun match. I think this match was a lot emotionally, and I just want to have a fun time," she said (WTA). Nobody says that after a comfortable evening.

Rybakina has done the opposite kind of work: three matches, no deciding sets, one genuinely uncomfortable passage against Yuliia Starodubtseva that ended 7-6(6) 6-3. She came into the tournament off a left-leg problem that pulled her out of Cincinnati, and she was frank about how bad it had been. "For a couple of days, it was painful to even walk. I started to practice, so I feel well. We're still making some adjustments," she said before the draw began (US Open). Since then, nothing has flared, and nothing has been asked of her defensively for long stretches either.

They have met once, and it was recent enough to matter: the Toronto quarterfinals in August, Rybakina winning 4-6 7-6(5) 6-4. Osaka took the first set there, which is the encouraging half of the story; the discouraging half is that Rybakina lost it without changing a single thing about how she was playing. Osaka's record at this tournament is the deepest of anyone in the draw, and Ashe at night still lifts her, but an Achilles hates repeated restarts after wide balls, and Rybakina's whole game is built on making an opponent restart.

This one I genuinely cannot call, which is why it is the match of the day. If Osaka returns with conviction and keeps the rallies to three shots, her timing on this surface is good enough to win it, and 2.168 is not a charity price. If she drifts back into pushing, Rybakina's weight of shot decides it inside ninety minutes. My instinct says Rybakina by a whisker, closer to the 22.5-game total going over than under, and that the state of Osaka's leg in the second set tells the whole story.

Iva Jovic — Cori Gauff

Jovic is eighteen, she has already won a main-tour title, and on Saturday she beat her friend Alexandra Eala 7-5 3-6 7-5 in a match she described with lovely honesty: "That felt like a marathon, and I felt like I lost my sanity five times over to win that match. But it's really worth it for this feeling," she said (US Open). She finished with cuts on her knees, a crowd that had spent much of the night backing the other side, and a body that had been asked for everything. One recovery day is not a lot of interest on that loan.

Gauff has not dropped a set — Zeynep Sonmez 6-3 6-4, Paula Badosa 6-4 7-6(5), Cristina Bucsa 6-3 6-4 — and only the Bucsa match showed the old irritation, which she kept from turning into a third set. Her own explanation of where she is at the moment is almost eerie: "It's an unexplained feeling that some days you just step on the court and you feel like you're not going to lose" (US Open). Their single previous meeting, in the Rome fourth round in May, went to Jovic first — she led a set — before Gauff took it 5-7 7-5 6-2, and Jovic has said since that she left a winnable position behind.

The problem Gauff sets is the oldest one in her career: her speed means a young player can construct three excellent attacking shots and still be required to hit a fourth. Jovic's answer cannot be more urgency. Bringing Gauff forward, changing height and going behind her would serve better than trying to bludgeon through from neutral, and Gauff's improved serve now gives her a clean exit from the pressure games that used to swallow her.

I have Gauff, and fairly firmly. She is fresher, she has been here on this court at this hour a hundred times, and Jovic's legs from Saturday are a real variable rather than a talking point. A −4 handicap on Gauff at 1.88 looks fair to me, with the caveat that Jovic's ball-striking is early and brave enough to steal a set if the American starts the night distracted by the occasion.

Two ankles, one Olympic ghost and a teenager's tired legs

The day rests on three questions, and none of them is about ranking. How much Achilles Osaka has left after the Mertens night; whether Zheng's fifth deciding set in a row is the one where her body finally sends the invoice; and how an eighteen-year-old's legs feel forty-eight hours after the best win of her life. Reputations are not going to settle any of that.

If only one match fits into an evening, I would take Osaka against Rybakina — two of the cleanest first-strike players in the sport, one of them running on adrenaline and crowd noise. And the sharp, specific calls on all four of these belong to the AI cappers on the match pages, where they do the part I have deliberately left vague.