US Open Draws - Is this America’s time?

**Catherine Whitaker** (0:10)
Hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, coming to you from inside the Arthur Ashe Stadium on Draw Day at the 2026 US Open. If you don't already know, I'm Catherine Whitaker, alongside me are David Law and Matt Roberts, and together, we are The Tennis Podcast. We aim to be your one-stop shop for tennis analysis. We're here every week of the year, and we are daily at all four of the major tournaments, including here at the US Open, where we'll be bringing you 18 shows over the next 18 days. No sleep till laver cup, folks. Matt, you are our resident draw guy. Matt loves a draw. The Grand Slam draws are his four favorite days of the year. Today's draw day for us was a little bit different.
How was it for you, Matt?

**Matt Roberts** (1:05)
It certainly was different, wasn't it?
We were, as advertised, on the stage at the US Open, breaking down the draw already, and when we saw our colleague Matt Futterman the other day, he said, have you seen the size of that stage that you're going to be on? You are going to feel like Bruce Springsteen. I said, well, I've seen the weather forecast, Matt, and I once saw Bruce Springsteen have to cut short a show because of a storm in San Sebastian. Maybe we're going to do that, put that out into the universe, thinking, well, that's obviously not going to happen. It will be fine. It will be fine. Well, that is exactly what happened. We got 20 minutes into our draw breakdown, and then the lightning came, the thunder came, the rain came, and it was a big evacuation situation.

**Catherine Whitaker** (1:57)
To be clear, we're not just pathetic Brits that can't hack a bit of rain. This was a health and safety situation. We were given no choice but to evacuate due to lightning, but they do say you should leave people wanting more.
We hopefully did do that in our curtailed show. Thank you to everybody that showed up and really showed out for us. Legends. In challenging conditions.

**Matt Roberts** (2:23)
Yeah, that was amazing actually. We had a really nice crowd of tennis podcast listeners who'd brought their umbrellas, were sticking it out during the rain, bringing the vibes for the show. It was really lovely.

**Catherine Whitaker** (2:35)
It was good stuff. Those people will have heard the takes that we're about to give on this show already.

**Matt Roberts** (2:41)
Some of them.

**Catherine Whitaker** (2:42)
There were the takes that were going to come in the second half of the show that we never got around to, so do stick around for those. The ripples of applause, incidentally, that you can hear are for the players that are practicing on the court of the Arthur Ashe Stadium. In front of us here is Alexander Zverev and it's Lerner Tien. Lots of applause for Lerner Tien and Michael Chang, who is supervising courtside his coach. And I think that might be, David, one of Michael Chang's children that I met as a baby at a Champions Tour event some years ago, which is extraordinary. The passing of time is an extraordinary thing, folks.
Returning our attention to the draw, we've done a lot of shows over the past few days. You've already both given your US Open predictions off the back of what we've seen in the hard court season so far. The champions in Canada and in Cincinnati, David, you had picked Ben Shelton for the men's title, and Coco Gauff for the women's. Matt, you had picked Carlos Alcaraz for the men's title, and also Coco Gauff for the women's. Let's start with the women's, and I guess my question is going to be the same for both draws, but I guess it is, does the draw change your prediction? Does it change how you feel about Coco Gauff or the various other contenders for this title?

**David Law** (4:07)
You know, it was interesting when I saw the draw initially, I thought my perception is going to change because actually Gauff looks like she's ended up in a really unfortunate section of the draw compared to, say, Aryna Sabalenka, who's in the opposite half, who's at the top of it, who I think has got a far more preferable draw. But Gauff, despite the fact that she opens against Sonmez in the first round, and could play either Badosa or Kasekina in the second round, she could play Sara Beylik, who had that great run recently in the third round. You know, these are tough opponents. It could be Jovic or Iala in round four. That's just to get to the quarterfinals, where she's in a section with Andrej Wren and Issam Ove.