U.S. Open recap Day 3: Why a player escaping disqualification raised a familiar problem

The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 U.S. Open.

Welcome to the U.S. Open briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.

On Day 3, a familiar problem reappeared, two Americans held up a tennis mirror and a showman threw a party.

Why did tennis’ default problem reappear?

No. 12 seed Belinda Bencic’s match against Yulia Putintseva on Stadium 17 was one of the most entertaining of the tournament so far, as both players wrestled with their emotions during a topsy-turvy three-setter.

Kazakhstan’s Putintseva closed out a 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 comeback with a roar of delight, upsetting Switzerland’s Bencic, who hit three double faults to be broken in the seventh game of the third set. But Putintseva felt that she should have won the match early in the second set — and not without justification.

Bencic led 2-0, 40-Ad, serving for a 3-0 lead but facing break point, when she sent a backhand long and lost the game. As Putintseva walked toward the net for the changeover, Bencic was looking for an outlet for her frustration, and she found one:

Bencic swatted a ball into the stands behind her without looking at what she was doing, and struck someone in the crowd, quickly turning to apologize when she realized what had happened.

Putintseva pointed the incident out to Arnaud Gabas, the chair umpire. After Putintseva and Gabas had an inaudible exchange, Bencic walked to the opposite end of the court to start the next game.

Putintseva wasn’t done talking.

“She hit the ball outside. She hit someone. Was it intentional? No,” Gabas said.

“But she hit someone,” Putintseva said.

“Eventually she hit someone, the person is fine. She received a code violation,” Gabas said. He had warned Bencic for unsportsmanlike conduct during the changeover.

“But the person that (Novak) Djokovic hit was also fine,” Putintseva said.

She was referring to the most famous default, the word tennis uses for immediately forfeiting a match, in recent times. At the 2020 U.S. Open, Novak Djokovic was defaulted after striking a ball in frustration during his fourth-round against Pablo Carreño Busta. Djokovic hit a linesperson in the throat, and was defaulted after a discussion between the chair umpire and supervisor.

In more recent incidents, punishments for defaults, especially those involving thrown or smashed rackets or struck balls, have depended on outcome rather than action. How hard a player hits a ball isn’t what matters — it’s whether or not someone gets hurt.

Against Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon in 2022, Stefanos Tsitsipas hammered a ball into the crowd in frustration, but escaped a default because it missed a fan’s head by inches. The same happened with Alex Michelsen at the Winston-Salem Open in North Carolina: he hit a spectator, but they said they were OK. The same happened with France’s Térence Atmane.

On the opposite side of the coin, Japan’s Miyu Kato accidentally struck a ballkid in the process of softly returning a ball to her. The chair umpire initially issued only a warning, but after Kato’s opponents argued that the ballkid’s crying warranted a default, the umpire changed their mind.

The hole in this logic is that it gives players credit for controlling what they are doing when they are not. The fact that the spectator Bencic hit was OK was down entirely to luck, and adjudicating incidents in this manner means there is no real deterrent for smacking the ball in frustration.

— James Hansen

How did a match between two Americans hold up a mirror?

Taylor Fritz debuted at the U.S. Open 10 years ago, when he was an 18-year-old upstart who had shot up the rankings.

He played like it that day, too, losing to veteran Jack Sock, who beat him in five sets, 7-6, 7-5, 3-6, 1-6, 6-4.

On Tuesday, Fritz was the veteran taking on a highly touted 18-year-old American. That was wild card Darwin Blanch, who has a ways to go to reach the level that Fritz was at when he made his debut, even if he presents as a kind of mirror image.

Despite the 10-year gap between them, Fritz and Blanch’s fundamentals of big serve, big forehand and sturdy backhand remain the archetype of men’s tennis development in America.

Blanch, a lefty, will need to develop more than that if he’s going to rise higher than world No. 245, his current ranking. He played Rafael Nadal at the Madrid Open two years ago when he was 16. It wasn’t pretty, and nor should it have been.

He won the U.S. Boys National Championships last year, earning a wild card into the U.S. Open. He lost in the first round to Martin Damm Jr. in straight sets.

Blanch received another wild card from the USTA this year. He’s 1-4 in ATP Tour matches and 15-14 on the Challenger Tour. He hasn’t won a Challenger title this year or won a final.

Darwin Blanch met Taylor Fritz on Arthur Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Open. (Simon Bruty / Anychance via Getty Images)

He’s 18, clearly still at a strength deficit against the men on the top pro tour. Without a more varied arsenal, point construction remains a challenge.

“He’s young, I feel like he was definitely feeling the pressure a little bit, which can go either way,” Fritz said in a news conference after his 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 win.

Fritz said when he was young and playing matches he was not expected to win, sometimes he would just “show up and play.”

“Show up and play amazing, because there is no pressure,” he said. “Then there’s matches like that where you’re on a big court and you really want to play well, and you’re just kind of feeling it a bit.”

Blanch felt every bit of it Tuesday. It’s the rare 18-year-old who can hang with an ATP Tour regular, much less a top-10 player.

Maybe in a decade, he will be on the other side of the mirror.

— Matt Futterman

How did a star vying for world No. 1 return after an injury?

Elena Rybakina is a member of the recently injured club at this U.S. Open (Carlos Alcaraz, Frances Tiafoe, Lorenzo Musetti, Rybakina — that’s a fun quartet!) who made it through their first-round match without issue. Rybakina beat the young American wild card Thea Frodin 6-3, 6-2 after a rain delay Tuesday.

The stakes are high for Rybakina in New York. The 27-year-old world No. 2 could take over the No. 1 ranking for the first time in her career via two pathways. If she makes it to the semifinals, she’s got the top spot.

Or, if someone other than current No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, Jessica Pegula or Coco Gauff wins the title, Rybakina is No. 1, no matter how far she goes this tournament.

Rybakina has been playing for some time with taping on her left Achilles, and on Aug. 20 retired during the first set of her quarterfinal match in Cincinnati against Iga Świątek. She couldn’t walk without pain after that match; she didn’t know if she’d be able to play the U.S. Open.

Rybakina took a full week off of tennis and kept her movement limited, which both got her healed enough to play and made her smooth win Tuesday the first test of her tendon in nearly two weeks.

If not for the taping, it would have been impossible to know anything was ever in doubt. Her game looked good, her movement looked normal, and she banged six aces after not being able to put weight on her left foot the last time she played.

In a news conference, Rybakina said she was pain-free after the match, but knows better than to get too cocky.

“We’ll see again day by day how I will wake up tomorrow, since it’s the first match, and kind of a lot of movement. In the moment I got injured, it was the serve [where she felt most pain]. I think everybody could see. Now it’s OK.”

— Ava Wallace

How did Gaël Monfils throw a birthday party at his final Grand Slam?

While Gauff was cruising to a straight-sets victory inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, Louis Armstrong Stadium was having a party.

Gaël Monfils, playing in his final Slam, rang in his 40th birthday with a 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-0 first-round win over Paraguay’s Adolfo Daniel Vallejo. Throughout the two hours and 22 minutes on court, the crowd screamed and cheered as Monfils showed what made him must-watch entertainment in his 22-year professional career.

Some wore France kits in support of Monfils, including one sporting Zinedine Zidane’s No. 10 shirt. Fans stood up and down in unison during changeovers, with one spectator in the front row feverishly directing his section when to stand up.

OH NO, HE DIDN’T! 🤯

The good old ELEVATION SENSATION 🚀 pic.twitter.com/nGFfXqyr3u

— US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 2, 2026

But the biggest crowd pop was Monfils serving at 1-0 in the fourth set. At 30-15, following a few rally exchanges, Monfils jumped at the center of the baseline and crushed a blazing cross-court forehand winner. The attendees erupted, chanting and clapping feverishly as Monfils bowed to all four sections of the stadium. Most were standing when Monfils won the match, as he did his trademark “Wakanda Forever” celebration.

As one last thank you, the fans serenaded Monfils with “Happy Birthday!” What a present for the Frenchman, becoming the oldest to win a men’s singles main draw match at the U.S. Open in 34 years, playing in one of the best atmospheres at this tournament so far.

— Lukas Weese

Other notable results on Day 3:

• Top seed Alexander Zverev (1) survived a five-set thriller against Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego 6-4, 3-6, 6-7(7), 7-5, 6-4.
• In-form Coco Gauff (4) used her first serve to blast past Turkey’s Zeynep Sönmez 6-3, 6-4.
• Italy’s Flavio Cobolli (5) recovered from a two-set deficit against Francisco Comesaña of Argentina to win 3-6, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.
• French Open champion Mirra Andreeva (5) made a smooth start. The Russian defeated Indonesia’s Janice Tjen 6-2, 6-2.
• Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti (13) defeated Wimbledon semifinalist Arthur Fery of the U.K. 6-3, 6-3, 7-5.

Shot of the day

Monfils cannot be denied, but nor can Zeynep Sönmez for this backhand pass on the run:

Drop Shots

☔ On a rainy day in New York City, at least one of the roofs did not malfunction this time.

🫸 Carlos Alcaraz’s right wrist passed its first test with flying colors as he returned to the court.

🏀 How Naomi Osaka’s latest Grand Slam fit paid tribute to a basketball legend.

👃 And why one player thinks Nick Kyrgios’ suspension for a positive test for cocaine was no surprise.

Up next: Second round begins

All times in ET

🎾 Men’s singles: Daniil Medvedev (7) vs. Sebastian Gorzny (WC)

11 a.m. ET on ESPN Unlimited

The 2021 champion, Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, came through a potentially angsty first-round match against France’s Hugo Gaston in straight sets. Now he meets 22-year-old Sebastian Gorzny, the rare young American who is confident in front of the service line and can use changes of rhythm to upset opponents. The 11 a.m. start time may soften the home-crowd advantage, but there is plenty of potential for Gorzny to upset the 30-year-old former world No. 1.

🎾 Women’s singles: Marta Kostyuk (11) vs. Sloane Stephens (WC)

~ 2 p.m. ET on ESPN Unlimited

Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk is one of the form players of 2026, with a 33-8 record and two consecutive Grand Slam semifinals. The 24-year-old will be a stern test for Sloane Stephens, the 2017 champion who this year came through qualifying and, at 33, is balancing her foundation and television commentary work with the love of the game. As in Medvedev vs. Gorzny, home-crowd advantage may tip the scales.

🎾 Women’s singles: Wang Xinyu vs. Anna Kalinskaya (21)

4 p.m. ET on ESPN Unlimited

Pray for the tennis balls in this encounter between China’s Wang Xinyu and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, two of the cleanest hitters in the game who will not take a step back. There might be some spurts of unforced errors, but the two previous meetings between Kalinskaya, 27, and Wang, 24 on hard courts have gone to three sets.

🎾 Men’s singles: Jaime Faria vs. Carlos Alcaraz (2)

~ 9p.m. ET on ESPN, ESPN Unlimited

Carlos Alcaraz, the defending champion returning from a right wrist injury, was a little rusty and plenty solid in his opening round match. For Portugal’s Faria, the same age as Alcaraz at 23, any opportunity to take advantage of the Spaniard’s incipient comeback may be overshadowed by his response to playing in such a febrile atmosphere. He has a short temper on court and can get flustered by small incidents; against Alcaraz, any dip in focus can be terminal.

U.S. Open 2026 women’s bracket

U.S. Open 2026 men’s bracket

Tell us what you noticed on the third day…