Amanda Anisimova beats Lilli Tagger in three sets to reach US Open 2026 third round

Amanda Anisimova looked ready to race through her second-round match at the US Open 2026. For a set, she did. Then 18-year-old Lilli Tagger pushed back hard enough to force a decider before the No. 10 seed took control again. On a warm Thursday at Grandstand, Anisimova won 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 to reach the third round in New York.

Amanda Anisimova sets the tone early

The American started clean. She put first serves in, took the ball early off both wings and kept LilliTagger from finding a rhythm. Tagger, playing her first US Open main draw and facing a Top 10 player for the first time, spent most of the opening set chasing the point instead of shaping it.

Anisimova closed the first set 6-3 without giving the Austrian much room to settle.

LilliTagger turns the second set

The match flipped with Anisimova serving at 2-1 in the second. Tagger sent a return high. Anisimova still got an overhead away, but Tagger’s next backhand clipped the net and dropped near the baseline for break point. Anisimova then double-faulted. The set was 2-2, and the teenager had a foothold.

From there, Tagger took over. She won four of the next five games, claimed the set 6-3, and sent the contest to a third. For a stretch, it looked like a genuine upset was forming on a court that often rewards belief as much as ranking.

That run did not last.

The third set is over quickly

Amanda Anisimova broke early in the decider and jumped to 3-0. The fourth game became the longest fight of the afternoon. She kept pressing for a second break and finally converted on her seventh break point of the game, ripping a forehand winner that Tagger could not reach. At 4-0, the tension left the match. Two games later it was finished.

Anisimova hit 30 winners, twice as many as Tagger. Both players finished with the same number of unforced errors. The difference was the big moments: Anisimova converted five break points to Tagger’s three.

A steep step up for a rising Austrian

It was a hard draw for Lilli Tagger, and still a marker of how fast she has climbed. The 2025 Roland Garros junior champion won her first tour-level title in Prague earlier this year, becoming the youngest Austrian to lift a WTA trophy. She entered the Top 100 in April and the Top 50 in July. New York was her first Slam main-draw run, and she had already beaten Tamara Korpatsch in round one.

Anisimova knows this stage. She reached back-to-back Grand Slam finals at Wimbledon and the US Open last year and has stayed productive on hard courts in 2026. The win lifted her to 22-11 this season and made it 17 victories in 22 hard-court matches. She has already reached the Dubai semifinals plus quarterfinals at the Australian Open and Cincinnati.

Next up is No. 24 seed Anastasia Potapova in the third round. After a brief scare on Grandstand, Anisimova is still in the draw and back in the kind of match she has learned to close.