Ann Li faces Donna Vekic in the third round at the US Open on Tuesday, September 2, with a 4:30 PM ET start on hard courts. In any Donna Vekic vs Ann Li prediction, the case for Li starts with a simple split: over the last twelve months on hard courts, Li holds serve 70 percent of the time and wins 33 percent of her return games across 370 service games tracked. Vekic holds 64 percent and wins 26 percent of return games across 187. That gap is the whole match in two numbers.
T Money's pick is Li at -142, but the official tier here is PASS. That means this is not a bet on the card, and the copy below explains both why the lean exists and why it stops short of a play.
Why T Money likes Li on hard courts
Both players opened the tournament with straight-set-adjacent wins, but the shape of those wins tells different stories. Li beat Antonia Ruzic 7-5, 6-1 in an hour and thirty-two minutes, a tight first set followed by a clean, efficient close. Vekic beat Talia Gibson 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 in two hours and thirty-three minutes, and the box score behind that scoreline is rougher than the result suggests: nine double faults against four aces, broken three times, and only 6 of 17 break chances converted for 35 percent. She won barely half the total points played, 109 to 101, against an opponent well outside the top 100.
That match did not represent a level change for Vekic. It reproduced her twelve-month hard-court line almost exactly: she is 5-12 on the surface in that window. Her 2026 form has been real, but it has been built on clay and grass, including a title at Queen's and wins over Raducanu, Boulter, and Pliskova. None of that transfers directly to a hard court, and the guard here matters: grass and clay results illustrate that Vekic can play well, they do not prove she can beat Li on this surface.
The serve numbers sharpen the same point. Vekic double-faults more often than she aces, 6.8 percent to 5.3 percent, against a returner in Li who wins 54 percent of second-serve return points. Li's own serve has actually improved over the last month, with first-serve points won up to 70.9 percent and second-serve points won up to 48.9 percent, both ahead of her twelve-month baseline.
The common opponent that says the same thing
Diane Parry played both of these players within the last two weeks at Monterrey, a WTA 500 on hard courts, and the results line up with everything above. Parry beat Vekic in the first round, 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-1, taking the last ten of twelve games while Vekic was still fresh off a bye into the tournament. Parry then had to survive Li in the semifinal, winning 7-6(7), 6-4, but only after Li led 5-2 in the first set and held a set point in the tiebreak. Same opponent, same surface, same two-week window: one match was a rout, the other nearly went the other way.
There's also a pattern in how Vekic's hard-court losses this year have gone. Five of them, against Parry, Xinyu Wang, Golubic, Andreeva, and Cocciaretto, share a shape: she takes the opening set and then fades. Li is a low-error, clean-striking player who holds her own serve at a high rate, which is exactly the profile that punishes a fade instead of handing games back.
Why it's a pass, not a play
Here's the part that keeps this off the official card. Li's one clear hard-court weakness is against exactly the kind of player Vekic can be at her best: a big first-strike server. Against that archetype, Li is 2-7 with only 21 percent of return games won. If Vekic's first serve is landing, this match can turn into a two-tiebreak lottery rather than a normal return battle, and her best hard-court win in 2026 came in exactly that shape, 7-6(4), 7-6(4). In that version of the match, Li may not get the single break she needs, no matter how much better her underlying numbers look on paper.
That is a real, specific risk, not a generic hedge, and it is the reason T Money is not backing this one even though the side itself is Li. A PASS on this card means the side is named but not staked. It is not a soft version of a play and it should not be read as one.
The verdict
The hard-court fundamentals point to Li: better recent serve numbers, a more efficient opening win, and a common-opponent result against Parry that favors her clearly. But Vekic's path to the upset runs through exactly the shot Li has struggled to handle, a heavy first serve turning the match into a tiebreak coin flip. That tension is why this is a PASS at -142 rather than an official play. We're on record with the side, not with the stake.