Rafael Jodar played one hour and 48 minutes of tennis on Court 17 on Wednesday and never once had a break point to hit.Bu Yunchaokete, the world No. 124, in the draw only because somebody else got hurt, beat the No. 12 seed 6-2, 6-1, 6-1 in a first-round match that had been pushed from Tuesday by rain. It was Bu’s first win in a Grand Slam main draw at the seventh attempt.
The shape of it was set early and never changed. Jodar, who has spent the season hitting through opponents from the back of the court, hit 15 winners and 37 unforced errors, a ratio that in practice meant he was missing the ball before Bu had to do anything difficult with it. Bu broke seven times from 16 chances. Jodar held four times in the match and won 51 points to Bu’s 89.
“He played better than me, and that’s the reason why he won today,” Jodar said afterwards, declining the injury question and the conditions question alike. He is 19, turns 20 on 17 September, and this was his last major as a teenager. He said he was physically fine, and that a first time can happen to anyone — the second time is the one that would tell him he had not learned.
Bu had been ready to go home. He is a lucky loser, beaten by Federico Cina in the final round of qualifying, and he took the place vacated when Thanasi Kokkinakis withdrew with an ankle sprain and a calf injury picked up in Cincinnati. Bu had finished his warm-up with an evening flight booked when he was told he was in and that Jodar was the opponent.
Under the rules governing lucky losers, a beaten qualifier must sign in with the referee each morning and be ready to walk on within minutes of being called; the compensation for that daily uncertainty is precisely the situation Bu found himself in.
Several outlets reported the win as the first by a lucky loser over a top-15 seed in the Open era. The claim traces to a single origin and has not been independently confirmed here, but the scale of the mismatch on paper is not in dispute. Jodar entered the tournament ranked No. 13 and was among the shorter prices in the men’s field.
That ranking was earned quickly. Jodar won Marrakech, reached the last eight at Roland Garros, made the final in Washington and the semi-finals in Montreal, and arrived in New York carrying the North American hard-court season on his results. He leaves it having won four games.
Bu, 24, is from Xinjiang and spent a stretch of his development training in Spain, where he built a heavy, clay-shaped baseline game. He has said he has worked since at adding forward intent to it, and most of his 2026 has been spent at Challenger level, where he won two titles on grass. His career high is No. 64.
He named Andy Murray as the player he grew up admiring and Li Na as the one who proved it could be done from China, and observed that the men’s side has not yet matched the women’s. He plays the American Michael Zheng next, a two-time collegiate champion and, like Bu until Wednesday, a man without a Grand Slam second week to his name.
