FLUSHING MEADOWS — Four months is a long time. Long enough to watch two Grand Slams from the sidelines, to complete a rehabilitation program that felt, at points, less like sports medicine and more like an act of faith. On Monday, Carlos Alcaraz steps back onto Arthur Ashe Stadium against Roman Safiullin, the defending champion testing a right wrist against competitive hardcourt for the first time since withdrawing from the Barcelona Open in April.
The 2026 US Open began on Sunday without the man who won it last year.
Jannik Sinner, the world No. 1 and reigning Wimbledon champion, withdrew nine days ago with a right knee injury. Al Jazeera reported that the setback arrived weeks after he lifted his third Grand Slam title at the All England Club and days before a tournament where he was the pre-tournament favourite. His absence strips the draw of its organizing principle. Every player in the bracket has spent the past week recalibrating for a tournament that suddenly contains a gap the size of the best player in the world.
Into that gap steps Novak Djokovic, 39 years old and still hunting. The Serbian opened his Day 1 night session against Argentine qualifier Mariano Navone on Arthur Ashe under the lights, with 25 Grand Slam titles within reach, one clear of the record he already shares with himself. In every major since 2023, the narrative has pushed the same conclusion: the window is closing. Djokovic has a different read on the situation, and in a draw this unsettled, he is not wrong to hold it.
“You never know what’s going to happen in a major,” he said in his pre-tournament media session.
The Sunday that opened the main draw never felt like opening day in the conventional sense. Venus Williams, 46, took on Sofia Kenin on Arthur Ashe in a match that stretched across four decades of major tennis history. Williams lost in two sets. The result was secondary to what her presence, year after year at Flushing, says about what this tournament demands and what it gives back.
That sensation, of a draw holding its breath, belongs to Monday, when Alcaraz returns.
The numbers are stark. In the 2025 US Open final, Alcaraz beat Sinner 6-2, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, then watched his title defence collapse before it began. The right wrist failed in Barcelona. The French Open went without him. Wimbledon went without him. Toronto and Cincinnati went without him. Even this week at Flushing, the mixed doubles partnership he formed with Serena Williams ended in a quarterfinal exit, his last competitive sets before the main draw began.
Alcaraz arrives now bidding to become the first man to win back-to-back US Open titles since Roger Federer’s five consecutive from 2004 to 2008. The challenge is substantial under any circumstances. Doing it while returning from surgery, with a wrist tested only in practice and a few mixed doubles frames, is categorically different.
His first-round opponent, Roman Safiullin, has spent the summer competing. The contrast matters on a hardcourt surface that punishes hesitation in shot production, any reluctance to commit fully, any moment where the body decides to protect before it attacks.
Alexander Zverev leads the ATP seedings in Sinner’s absence, carrying the confidence of a Roland Garros title into New York’s hardcourt humidity. The top seed has played all summer without significant interruption, a consistency that in a draw this disordered becomes its own competitive advantage. Zverev occupies the bottom half of the draw; Alcaraz and Djokovic share the top, setting up a potential semifinal between the two players with the most at stake here.
The women’s side is more settled, and more watched for particular reasons. Aryna Sabalenka arrives as the two-time defending champion, chasing something only Serena Williams managed in the Open Era: three consecutive US Open titles. Serena took the last of three in a row in 2014. No woman has matched it since. Yahoo Sports noted that Sabalenka’s form this summer has produced genuine questions about whether New York’s two-week grind can hold.
What the 2026 US Open lacks, in its opening days, is the narrative architecture the previous two seasons provided. Sinner and Alcaraz had turned men’s tennis into a bilateral conversation, one that was still generating new sentences when the knee and the wrist intervened within months of each other. The sentence was mid-construction when both put their pens down.
What the tournament does not know, as its first full day of play ended on Sunday night, is whether Djokovic won his opening round against Navone; the match on Arthur Ashe was still underway when this was filed. It does not know whether Alcaraz’s body will permit the aggressive tennis that defines his game. It does not know whether Sabalenka’s form holds through seven rounds.
That uncertainty is not a weakness. It is the thing that makes this tournament worth watching more closely than any US Open in years. The two players who structured the men’s conversation are both compromised. The man with the most to gain, 39 years old and one major from history, opened his campaign on Arthur Ashe on Sunday night. The result was still pending.
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