Coco Gauff plays Iva Jovic in an all American round of 16 at the 2026 US Open on Monday night, with a quarterfinal place on the line. Gauff is the No. 4 seed and the 2023 champion at Flushing Meadows. Jovic is 18 years old, seeded 14th, and into the second week of a major for the first time in her career. First ball is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET on Arthur Ashe Stadium.
What time is Gauff vs Jovic, and what channel is it on?
The match is the opening contest of the Arthur Ashe evening session on Monday, September 7, scheduled for 7 p.m. ET. Alexander Zverev against Luciano Darderi follows it on the same court. ESPN has exclusive United States rights to the US Open, with daily coverage split across ESPN and ESPN2, and every match from all 16 courts streaming on the ESPN app for subscribers to an ESPN Unlimited plan. ABC carries only the three Sundays of the tournament, so Monday night is an ESPN window.
Ashe has a retractable roof, so rain will not push this one off the schedule.
How Gauff reached the fourth round
Gauff has not lost a set in New York. She opened with Zeynep Sonmez, then handled Paula Badosa, an opponent who had beaten her twice before including at the 2025 Australian Open, and then beat Cristina Bucsa 6-3, 6-4 on Saturday afternoon. That is the fifth year in a row she has reached the second week here.
The serve remains the swing factor. Against Bucsa she landed just 49 percent of first serves and hit 15 winners against 28 unforced errors, and still won in straight sets because she won 74 percent of the points behind the first serves she did land and returned relentlessly, taking 51 percent of points on the Bucsa serve. She arrives on a run that began with the Cincinnati title in August, where she beat Jessica Pegula 6-2, 6-4 in the final.
Iva Jovic is not a formality
Jovic is 18 and ranked a career high No. 14. She is 34-18 on the season and reached this round by outlasting Alexandra Eala 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 in a three hour Saturday night match on Ashe that Eala led by a break in the deciding set. Jovic hit 44 winners against 27 unforced errors and saved 12 of the 20 break points she faced, which is the number that matters most heading into Monday.
She takes the ball early off both wings and changes direction well from the baseline. The pressure sits almost entirely on the other side of the net: Gauff is the former champion and the heavy favorite, and Jovic gets to play with nothing to lose in front of a crowd that will be split.
Head to head
They have met once. At the Italian Open in Rome in May 2026, Gauff came from a set and a break down and saved a match point to win 5-7, 7-5, 6-2 in the fourth round. That was on clay. Monday is their first meeting on a hard court.
Prediction
Gauff in three. The matchup logic favors her: Jovic wants to take time away, and Gauff’s court coverage is the specific thing that punishes a player who has to keep hitting closer to the lines to end points. The counterargument is the serve, which has been unreliable enough all fortnight that a hot returner can steal a set. Expect one, and expect Gauff to win the third comfortably once the errors start coming from the other end.
The bottom line
Gauff has lost in the fourth round in each of the last two US Opens, which is the whole subplot here. She is playing better than she was in either of those years and has not dropped a set, but she has drawn the most dangerous unseeded style of opponent left in her section. The winner plays for a semifinal spot on Wednesday.