Bergs Has Survived New York, Van de Zandschulp Has Enjoyed It

The third round of the US Open is where the tournament stops being a formality and starts being a story. Zizou Bergs, seeded 31, arrives here having spent almost four hours in his second round and rather more emotional energy than that. Botic van de Zandschulp arrives having beaten Alex de Minaur in three sets without ever looking especially bothered about it. Neither man has been here before as a pair — there is no rivalry, no history, nothing to lean on — which means the whole psychological contest has to be built from scratch on the night. Bergs is trying to reach the second week of a major for the first time. Van de Zandschulp is trying to prove, once again, that his New York upsets are not accidents.

Zizou Bergs and the Art of Winning Ugly

Bergs has not played well at this tournament, and he is honest enough to say so. After his rain-split first round he admitted he was "not completely satisfied," that he was not yet where he wanted to be, and that his only fixed reference point was aggression: "I always try to be aggressive." Against Jesper de Jong the picture was messier still — De Jong raced away early, Bergs clawed the opening set back, then lost his rhythm almost entirely in the second, reasserted himself in the third, and finally sat in a tense, error-strewn fourth set that he won because he was the calmer man in the tie-break.

The match report noted that both players produced considerably more errors than clean winners. That is not a compliment to anybody, but it does frame what Bergs is doing well: he resets. He did it after a poor second set and again at the start of the fourth-set tie-break, and his own summary — "It wasn't always pretty tennis" — was followed by the line that matters more: "these are battles you have to learn to win."

Conditions have been part of his problem. Bergs says the weather shifted during the De Jong match, the humidity rose, the ball travelled less freely and the court felt heavier. He has changed his string tension repeatedly this fortnight because no two days have offered him the same court. "That's the US Open: you constantly have to adapt." For a player who wants to accelerate early and take the ball before the rally settles, a heavy ball is a tax on every good idea he has.

His North American summer read the same way — capable, uneven. In Montreal he lost the first set to Sebastian Báez and then grew steadily more dominant, before being taken apart by Ben Shelton, whose serving left him almost no way into a return game, especially in the second set. There is no reported injury, and his coach Jan De Witt insists "he's improved in every area," describing his own job as giving direction and steadying Bergs when the doubt arrives. The residue of that long second round, rather than any physical complaint, is the honest question mark.

Botic van de Zandschulp Serves, and the Match Simplifies

Van de Zandschulp did not start this tournament in command either. Against Jan Choinski he struggled for rhythm, survived a difficult service game at 2-3, and then won five games in a row and became clearly the better player in ordinary baseline exchanges. Even when Choinski led 4-1 in the third-set tie-break, the Dutchman simply turned it round without any visible agitation. That detail is worth keeping: he fixed the problem, then refused to hand back the match.

The De Minaur win was a level above. He took his single chance in the first set rather than needing five, he lost a break lead in the second and did not shrink, he stayed inside a long return game at 5-5, and the third set was his most controlled stretch of the fortnight. He finished with a patient, extended rally instead of swinging for an exit. His own explanation was two sentences long: "I served very well today; that made the difference," and "I often play my best tennis in New York."

His month before this contained the same peaks. He beat Daniil Medvedev in Montreal in a match where nobody could protect serve, then came back from match points down against Hubert Hurkacz, produced a remarkable retrieval off an overhead, started winning the long exchanges in the decider and broke at 5-5. In Winston-Salem he dismantled Luciano Darderi from every part of the court.

The warnings sit right next to those wins. In Cincinnati he gave up an early break with consecutive double faults, recovered from 1-4 in the second, then wasted his return chances and played a poor tie-break. In the Winston-Salem quarter-final the wind pulled his forehand timing apart, a botched drop shot ended the first set, and once Benjamin Bonzi broke early in the second he could not manufacture any return pressure. His high level appears often; it remains attached to his first-serve rhythm, his forehand timing and the weather. He has no injury concerns and, crucially, has spent far less on court here than Bergs.

Two Forehands, One Heavy Ball and the Question of Who Dips First

The obvious hinge is Van de Zandschulp's first serve against Bergs's return. When the Dutchman lands it with conviction, he strikes the next ball from on or inside the baseline and directs the rally instead of defending it — exactly the platform that undid De Minaur. Bergs's loss to Shelton showed how uncomfortable he becomes when the return almost never reaches a neutral phase; Van de Zandschulp has no left-handed spin to copy, but the delivery is heavy enough to pose the same structural problem. The counterweight is that his double faults arrive in clusters, as Cincinnati and the opening of the Darderi match both demonstrated, and Bergs stands aggressively enough on the return to punish a wobbling second serve.

Bergs's route in is movement, not volume. Trading hard, central groundstrokes lets Van de Zandschulp plant his feet and use that clean, compact power, so Bergs needs to open the court with the forehand, make the Dutchman hit while moving sideways, attack the short reply and come forward rather than trying to finish from three metres behind the baseline. The risk is the one he showed against De Jong: when his rhythm disappears, aggression slides into impatience. Both men live off the forehand and both have watched it collapse in recent weeks, so the player willing to accept one or two extra neutral balls is likely to win the error count.

Conditions cut in both directions. Heavy, humid air blunts Bergs's acceleration and demands more precision from him, while longer rallies stretch Van de Zandschulp's lateral recovery; either way, first-serve percentage and patience matter more than raw pace, and freshness matters more late. Bergs has already said he is struggling to read the ball's response day to day; Van de Zandschulp has already produced his best match of the tournament in these same New York evenings.

There is no home advantage to divide them — both have spoken fondly of the place, Bergs about feeding off the night-session noise, Van de Zandschulp about a crowd he called fantastic. He is also the last Dutch player left in the singles, which brings attention without hostility. Bergs, for his part, is guarding carefully against the trap of a friendly-looking draw, citing Wimbledon and noting that Van de Zandschulp did not beat De Minaur so convincingly "without reason." Both have just recovered from ugly deficits — Bergs from 0-4 in a set, Van de Zandschulp from 1-4 in a tie-break — so the match will probably turn not on who starts better, but on who handles his first bad ten minutes without letting them become a set.