The list of US Open qualifiers closed on Friday without Kei Nishikori on it. The 36-year-old, playing the last summer of his career, was beaten in the final qualifying round by a 19-year-old from his own country, at the end of a rain-delayed week that pushed several of the tour’s oldest names out and its youngest ones through.
Rei Sakamoto beat Nishikori 6-4, 7-6(3) to reach his first US Open main draw. Nishikori, who announced in April that he would retire at the end of the 2026 season, had entered the qualifying event on a wild card. He was the first Japanese man to reach the top 10 and remains the highest-ranked Asian man in the sport’s history, peaking at No. 4 in March 2015 and reaching the 2014 US Open final.
“To be honest, I still wish I could continue my playing career,” Nishikori wrote in his retirement statement.
The handoff. Sakamoto is 10th in the ATP’s live Next Gen race, three places behind Federico Cina, who also qualified on Friday after beating Buyunchaokete 3-6, 6-4, 7-5. Both are 19. Neither had played a US Open main draw before this week. The generation that Nishikori spent a career carrying alone in Japanese men’s tennis now has company, and it arrived by taking his place.
Two men through without finishing. Thursday’s schedule collapsed under rain, forcing the last matches into Friday and producing two of the week’s stranger routes into the main draw. Grigor Dimitrov secured his place on Thursday when Otto Virtanen withdrew ahead of their match. Toby Samuel advanced when Cristian Garin retired trailing 4-6, 6-4, 5-0. Hugo Gaston, Dalibor Svrcina, Nishesh Basavareddy and Tristan Schoolkate were among the others to come through.
The women’s draw split the same way. Zheng Qinwen, the Olympic champion in Paris and now ranked No. 121 after elbow surgery last year, qualified across two days, beating Elena Pridankina 6-4, 3-6, 6-0. Rain had halted that match overnight with Pridankina leading 5-2 in the second set. Zheng won seven of the last eight games on resumption. It was only the second Grand Slam qualifying event of her career; the first, at the 2022 Australian Open, also ended with a main-draw place. Her career to date has been built on the ranking she is now trying to rebuild.
A 16-year-old came with her. Kristina Liutova beat Poland’s Martyna Kubka 6-4, 6-0 to reach her first major main draw. The WTA said Liutova becomes the first player born in 2010 to compete in a Grand Slam main draw. She won the Memphis title last month as a qualifier on her WTA main-draw debut, and arrived in New York on an active winning streak that now stands at nine matches.
Andreescu missed. The 2019 champion, playing Grand Slam qualifying for the first time since 2018, lost to Tamara Zidansek from a set and a break up, in two hours and 44 minutes. The two had not met since the first round of Roland Garros in 2021, when Zidansek won 6-7(1), 7-6(2), 9-7 and went on to the semifinals. Friday’s result puts the Slovenian into her first US Open main draw since 2022. Robin Montgomery, the former US Open junior champion, had qualified on Thursday by beating Carson Branstine 2-6, 6-2, 6-2.
Sixteen men and 16 women came through in all. The main draw begins on Sunday.
