What the Empty Practice Courts Reveal About Two US Open Upsets: When the Notebook Exposes the Gaps Behind the Seeding

At 11:47 PM on an August night at Flushing Meadows, when the crowd was still buzzing about Taylor Fritz's agonizing comeback loss, I had already left the stands to return to my hotel. Not because the match was over — but because I knew the real answer wouldn't be found on the match court at 11:47 PM. It would be at the practice court at 6 AM the next morning, when no one was allowed in. Six of the top ten men's seeds fell in the first week of the 2026 US Open. That number made analysts revisit the rankings, updated transfer predictions, and prompted millions of fans to ask the same question: What is happening at the top of men's tennis? But I, who has been following American tennis for four decades, was not hasty with the big questions. I opened my forty-page notebook and began reading from what had been recorded — not the score, but how a person looks at the space behind the right defender. Taylor Fritz, the ninth seed, entered his third-round match against Francisco Cerundolo with the mindset of a player completely in control. He led by two sets, broke early in the third set, and to anyone watching from the stands, the match was essentially over. I recall a March afternoon at Indian Wells, when I sat in the last row of the practice court — where no one sits because it's too far to see clearly — and watched Fritz's coaching staff adjust his positioning during return-of-serve drills. They talked about the distance between his front and back foot, the angle of his foot placement when stepping into the ball's landing point, how to maintain balance after the swing. Things no one sees on television. Fritz's first two sets were proof of that work. He moved well, maintained consistent rhythm, and capitalized on break-point opportunities. But then, as someone who has witnessed hundreds of matches from a seat no one wants, I noticed a sign that commentators in the stands often overlook: the gap between the second serve and the approach into the rally began to appear. Not with Fritz — with his breathing rhythm, with how he placed his racket down between games, with the moment he glanced toward the coaching chair without seeming to need anything. After the third set, when Cerundolo began regaining rhythm and the match became more balanced, I noticed a small detail in how Fritz changed his serving rhythm. He began using more slice serves — a sign typically appearing when a player feels loss of control on the forehand side. This is not a detail to judge, but a detail to understand. And when Fritz lost the fourth set 4-6, then lost the deciding set 4-6, I didn't need to look at the scoreboard to know what had happened. I had seen it since the third set. After the match, Fritz said: "I don't know how I let that happen today." From the perspective of someone who has heard hundreds of post-match statements, this is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of a player trying to put into words what he cannot explain technically. And that, precisely, is when I knew this was not simply a loss — this was a lesson about gaps that even the player himself had not fully seen. On the other side, in a match that received less attention but spoke more about the nature of elite tennis, Flavio Cobolli — the fifth seed — was holding his racket on an evening he would never forget. Not because he won, but because of how he won the first set, then lost three consecutive sets 3-6, 0-6, 3-6, where the third set — the set with no points for his opponent — would follow him in the years ahead like an invisible scar. The first-set tiebreak that Cobolli won was a beautiful tiebreak. He played with full patience, not rushing in extended rallies, and knew how to wait for opponent errors rather than creating opportunities himself. That is the playstyle of a player who understands that sometimes, the biggest space on the court is not where the ball goes, but where the opponent doesn't want the ball to go. But immediately after that tiebreak, everything collapsed in a way that no analyst could explain with statistics alone. The second set, Cobolli lost 3-6. The third set, he lost 0-6. A fifth-seed player who had just won a fully controlled tiebreak, lost six consecutive games without scoring a single point. No saved break-points, no memorable winners, no signs of fighting. Just a gap — the gap between what Cobolli could do and what was actually happening on the court. I was in Rome in 2026, when Cobolli was still a name mentioned in conversations about Italy's young generation. At that time, people talked about his cross-court forehand, his beyond-his-years match-reading ability, how he stayed calm in important games. But few talked about what I noticed on the coaching bench during extended matches: Cobolli plays best when he has time to think. When the pace forces him to react quickly — instead of being proactive — his game begins to break down. The third set of his match against Alexander Blockx was not a tennis set. It was a endurance test, and Cobolli did not pass. But the question is not "Did he lose?" — it is "What caused a fifth seed, who had just completely controlled a set, to fall into a state of being unable to compete after just two sets?" People often describe Grand Slam upsets as random events — "a bad day," "the opponent played out of their mind," "too much pressure." Those explanations are not wrong, but they are like saying a team lost 0-5 because "they were unlucky." There are deeper gaps, and I have spent four decades learning to see them. Fritz's loss was not an upset. It was a process — a process I believe began before the match even started. Fritz came to the 2026 US Open as the ninth seed, but his actual ranking throughout this season showed a much more complex picture than that number. He didn't have a bad year — but he also didn't have a stable enough year to match the expectations placed on a top-10 seed. The difference between those two things is everything that creates the gap between a player "who can beat anyone" and a player "who wins when it matters." What I noticed about Fritz throughout the 2026 season was not a lack of skill — his skills have been proven over many years. It was the absence of something I call "the closing instinct." I have observed players with the ability to close matches — those who, when leading by two sets, don't play differently, play the same, even more decisively. Fritz, in the third set, changed. He played safer. He waited for errors instead of creating victories. And in tennis, the moment you start waiting, you have already started losing. Cerundolo, who will face Blockx in the fourth round, was not a player with a particularly threatening playing style against Fritz technically. But he possesses a virtue that many young players lack: patience under pressure. When Fritz started playing defensively, Cerundolo advanced. When Fritz started waiting, Cerundolo attacked. That was a silent role exchange that only those sitting in the seat no one wants to sit in could see clearly. Now, here is where I want to say what most US Open analysis pieces will overlook: the difference between losing points and losing matches does not lie in technique, but in how a player handles what I call "the gray zone." The gray zone is the time between when you still have complete control and when you have lost everything. With Fritz, that gray zone appeared in the third set, fifth game, when he had a break-point and couldn't capitalize. From that point on, the match no longer belonged to him. With Cobolli, the gray zone was even clearer — and more painful. The third set, 0-6, is one of the hardest things to explain in tennis. A fifth seed, who had just won a fully controlled tiebreak, couldn't win a single game in the next set. Not because Blockx played too well — but because Cobolli had stopped playing tennis at a level I hadn't seen from a player at that position since I started following professional tennis. This is where I want to talk about what I call "the court of data." Many will call Cobolli's loss a "choke" — a squeeze. But from my perspective, that is an unfair judgment. A "choke" implies that the player had the ability but couldn't perform. But in that third set, Cobolli didn't just underperform — he seemed to no longer be there. And when a person is no longer there, the fault doesn't lie in psychology. The fault lies somewhere deeper — possibly physical, possibly preparation, possibly something we have no right to know. In the summer of 2026, when Bastian Schweinsteiger joined Chicago Fire, I was at the team's practice field from 5 AM. Schweinsteiger, once one of the world's top box-to-box midfielders, dropped deep into Veljko Paunović's system. He scored only 4 goals that season, but thanks to him, Nemanja Nikolić won the MLS Golden Boot with 24 goals. No one wrote about that. No one praised Schweinsteiger for what he had sacrificed. But in the locker room after the victory, Paunović said a sentence I remember to this day: "People look at the goal, I look at the space behind the right fullback." I think about that sentence every time I witness an early Grand Slam exit and see someone called a "failure." Fritz did not fail at the 2026 US Open. He reached the third round of a Grand Slam, won the first two sets, and then lost the match in a way that even he couldn't explain. That doesn't make him a lesser player. It only shows that tennis, at the highest level, is not a sport for the strongest — but for those who can maintain strength in the weakest moments. Cobolli is different. His third set is a black mark — not on his career, but on how we read about him. People will say he "choked" at the US Open. They will say he doesn't have enough mental strength. They will write analysis pieces about "how young players handle pressure." But I, with four decades of following tennis since the 1980s, know that there are losses whose simplest explanation is not the right one. And there are players condemned unjustly simply because people refuse to look more carefully. Six top-10 seeds eliminated in the first week of the 2026 US Open is not a sign of decline at the top of men's tennis. It is a sign of competition — real competition, not homogenization. As the top players become more similar in playing style — the same serve style, the same movement, the same ball striking — it is the challengers who are finding the gaps that system leaves behind. Cerundolo and Blockx are not players with flashy playing styles. They don't have highlight-reel winners that electrify crowds. But they have something that fewer and fewer young players have: the ability to see the space and wait for it. Cerundolo waited for Fritz to change his game. Blockx waited for Cobolli to lose focus. And when the moment came, they didn't miss. This is why I say the US Open upset is not in Fritz or Cobolli losing. The upset is in us — those who follow, analyze, and write about tennis — not seeing it coming. We let the rankings cloud our vision. We let the ninth seed and fifth seed become symbols of stability, when the reality is they were standing on thin ice. The morning after Fritz's match, I arrived at the US Open practice courts at 5:45 AM. The practice court was silent — no spectators, no media, just the sound of balls hitting racket faces and shoes moving on the hard surface. I stood in the corner where I always stand — where no one notices — and watched a young player practicing with his coach. He was not Fritz. Nor was he Cobolli. He was a player I had never written about, a name that the rankings placed at a position no one remembers. But I noticed how he moved, how he placed his foot when stepping into the ball's landing point, how he maintained steady breathing between swings. And I knew — with the certainty that four decades of observation brings — that within two years, maybe three, that name would appear on the scoreboard of a major match. Not because he was better than Fritz or Cobolli. But because he was learning to see the space — instead of looking at the ball. That, precisely, is the lesson the 2026 US Open taught. Not through flashy winners. Not through emotional interviews. But through the silence of the practice court at 5:45 AM, where the answers always lie — waiting for someone willing to look. When I left the practice court, my forty-page notebook had another new page. Not a record of Fritz's loss or Cobolli's bagel set. But a record of a moment I witnessed: that young player, after finishing practice, standing alone at the corner of the court and looking toward the main court. He wasn't looking at the scoreboard. Not at the spectators. He was looking at the space — the open area between the baseline and the stands — where I have spent my entire career learning to see. And I thought: this is the next generation. Not those called seeds. But those who know how to look at the space.