Christopher O’Connell was one game from the U.S. Open main draw. Serving for the match at 5-4 in the second set against Hungary’s Zsombor Piros on Friday, the Australian, a 15-year professional with a career-best win over Jannik Sinner already in his pocket, needed only to close it out.
He never got the chance. O’Connell went down during the final point of that game, and what followed looked bad enough that he was in tears on Court 10 at Flushing Meadows. He lost the second-set tiebreaker 7-3 and then retired, handing Piros the victory and the spot in the 128-player field that O’Connell had been one game from claiming himself.
The numbers tell a cruel story. O’Connell took the opening set 7-5, dominant enough that a straight-sets finish looked realistic. He reached 5-4 in the second, one hold away from a return trip to the main draw. Then he fell chasing down the last point of that game, and the match — and possibly the tournament — turned in an instant.
Christopher O’Connell’s Qualifying Run Ends in Injury
No trainer’s diagnosis or O’Connell statement had surfaced as of Friday afternoon. What’s known comes from what was visible courtside, which was a player suddenly in pain, a medical timeout, and a competitor who couldn’t finish what he started.
The retirement arrived after O’Connell had already banked two clean qualifying wins, a straight-sets result over Stefanos Sakellaridis and another over Nicolai Budkov Kjaer. He came into New York off arguably his best hard-court outing of the year in Cincinnati.
O’Connell, a 32-year-old from Sydney who spent six months cleaning boats on Pittwater Harbour during a mid-career slump, has built a résumé out of exactly this kind of grinding persistence. He cracked the top 100 for the first time in July 2022, and made the third round at both the 2022 Australian Open and the 2023 Wimbledon Championships.
His signature match victory came when he defeated Sinner during a 2021 run in Atlanta before the Italian became the sport’s dominant force. A Nottingham Challenger title on grass earlier this year, his first career title on that surface, marked another turn in a career defined by comebacks from injury and ranking freefalls alike.
Zsombor Piros Advances, Faces Long Odds in Round One
Piros, a 26-year-old right-hander from Budapest, advances into his second career Grand Slam main draw. He’s a Challenger-level grinder more than a proven ATP threat, with a résumé built largely away from hard courts and no tour-level Slam win yet on his record. Last year’s U.S. Open ended in a three-set first-round loss to Zachary Svajda, his only previous appearance at Flushing Meadows.
He arrives having already logged three matches and a three-set battle just to get here, workload that cuts both ways heading into a best-of-five opener. The men’s singles draw had not fully assigned qualifier slots to specific first-round opponents as of Friday, leaving Piros’s exact path unconfirmed. A kind draw gives him a live shot at a first Slam match win.
O’Connell’s 2025 and early 2026 carried a run of retirements and withdrawals that pushed him outside the top 100 more than once. Cincinnati looked like the turnaround. Friday looked like the same old story, at the worst possible moment.
15-Year-Pro Who Once Beat Jannik Sinner Forced Into U.S. Open Decision