One game in the third set
Lucrezia Stefanini beat Dayana Yastremska 6-3, 4-6, 6-1 on Sunday to reach the second round of the US Open. The decider took the Italian barely half an hour of tennis and cost Yastremska everything she had built in the second set.
The pattern of the match is in the games count. Stefanini won 16 games to Yastremska’s 10 across the three sets, and six of the Ukrainian’s ten came in the one set she took. Levelling a match and then producing a 6-1 is a specific kind of collapse.
Yastremska hits harder than almost anyone on the WTA when the timing is there. The trade-off has followed her whole career, and it decided this one.
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The 2024 benchmark, and what came after
Yastremska’s ceiling is not in doubt. In January 2024 she came through qualifying at the Australian Open and reached the semi-finals, beating Victoria Azarenka in the fourth round and Linda Noskova in the quarters. Only a handful of qualifiers in the Open era have gone that deep at a major.
Nothing since has come close to repeating it. Two and a half years on, she goes out in the first round in New York to an opponent who has spent most of her career several tiers below Grand Slam main draws.
What Stefanini has earned
The second round pays $190,000 against $140,000 for a first-round exit, a $50,000 swing that matters far more at Stefanini’s level of the game than at the top of the draw. The 2026 tournament has a record $108 million purse, up twenty percent on last year.
Aryna Sabalenka is the No. 1 seed and two-time defending champion, chasing a third straight New York title that no woman has managed since Serena Williams in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Elena Rybakina, Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff follow her in the seedings.
First-round matches run through Tuesday, September 1.
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