NIGERIAN tennis prospect Oluwaseun Peter Ogunsakin will begin his campaign in the 2026 US Open Junior Championships on Sunday, September 6.
He has been scheduled to face Chinese Taipei’s Kuan-Shou Chen in the boys’ singles first round at 4:00 p.m. Nigerian time at Court 8 of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York.
Ogunsakin earned his place in the 64-player main draw after an impressive qualifying campaign in New York.
The Nigerian defeated Poland’s Tymon Litwic 6-3, 6-0 in his opening qualifying match before overcoming Canada’s Felix Roussel, the top seed in qualifying, 6-3, 6-4 in the second round to secure one of the six available qualifying spots.
He will face Chinese Taipei’s Kuan-Shou Chen in the first round of the boys’ singles main draw.
Chen is among the seeded players in the tournament and is ranked 16th in the junior world rankings, according to tournament listings.
The Chinese Taipei player has already competed at the Australian Open, Roland-Garros and Wimbledon junior tournaments this year.
He reached the quarter-finals of the Australian Open junior event and the third round at Wimbledon
Ogunsakin, however, comes into the US Open with growing experience on the international junior circuit.
The Nigerian began his Grand Slam campaign at the Roland-Garros Junior Championships before competing at Wimbledon, where he came through qualifying to reach the boys’ singles main draw.
At Wimbledon, he defeated British wildcard Archie Gray and Canada’s Benjamin Azar in qualifying to secure his place in the main draw.
He then partnered Botswana’s Ntungamili Raguin in the boys’ doubles, with the pair reaching the semi-finals.
Ogunsakin and Raguin defeated sixth seeds Yanick Theodore Alexandrescou of France and Ryo Tabata of Japan 6-4, 7-6 in the quarter-finals before their run ended in the last four.
The ITF described their semi-final appearance as one of the notable stories of the Wimbledon Junior Championships.
His progress has also earned recognition from the Grand Slam Player Development Programme.
In January, the programme announced Ogunsakin as one of the players selected to receive a US$25,000 grant for the 2026 season to support competition-related costs.
At the time, Ogunsakin was ranked 82nd on the ITF Junior Circuit and was described as the second-highest-ranked Nigerian junior since combined junior rankings were introduced in 2004, according to the US Open and ITF.
The US Open Junior Championships are the final junior Grand Slam tournament of the season.
The singles main draw features 64 players, while the doubles competition has 32 teams in each of the boys’ and girls’ events.
A victory over Chen would give Ogunsakin his first singles main-draw win at a Grand Slam junior tournament and further underline his rapid progress on the international circuit.
Mustapha Usman is an investigative journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: musman@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M