One Night Into the US Open, the Whole Thing Is Wide Open

The 2026 US Open had been running for one night when the men’s tournament stopped looking like the one advertised on the posters. Jannik Sinner never made it into the draw because his right knee needed more time, while Novak Djokovic survived four hours and 36 minutes against Mariano Navone before his body stopped cooperating.

It was a sad match to watch. Djokovic led by two sets to one and briefly went a break ahead in the fourth, but nausea, back pain, shoulder trouble and cramping gradually turned the match into something closer to survival. Navone still had to remain calm enough to finish the job, which he did, winning 7-6(5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 and giving Djokovic his earliest Grand Slam defeat in 20 years. Reuters

By the time Venus Williams and Sofia Kenin began the second match of the Arthur Ashe night session at 12:13 a.m., the tournament had already given us an injured favourite, a collapsing legend and a scheduling decision better suited to the time people leave a club than begin a Grand Slam match. The US Open is wide open, although nobody would have chosen this route to get there.

Quick Answer

Alexander Zverev has the clearest route through the men’s draw and a genuine chance to win his second Grand Slam, although defending champion Carlos Alcaraz remains the most dangerous player if his recently injured wrist holds together. Daniil Medvedev is already through, while Ben Shelton, Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe, Arthur Fils and Rafael Jódar have the kind of opportunity that normally disappears once Sinner and Djokovic reach the second week.

The women’s side is healthier and more difficult to call. Aryna Sabalenka is chasing a third consecutive US Open, Coco Gauff arrives with six straight victories, Elena Rybakina can leave New York as world No. 1 and Jessica Pegula has already made a comfortable start.

Our early picks are Zverev and Sabalenka, but neither half of the tournament looks safe enough for confident speeches after one weekend.

The Djokovic downfall has already started

People are already describing this as the downfall of Novak Djokovic, and for once it does not feel like another premature attempt to bury him. He reached the Australian Open final, beat Sinner along the way and later made the Wimbledon semifinal, so the tennis has not simply disappeared. A player capable of those results is clearly not finished.

What has disappeared is the physical margin that once allowed Djokovic to survive a terrible afternoon, recover overnight and do it again two days later. A health condition affected him in the Cincinnati heat, and the same problems returned in New York, where nausea, vomiting, back pain, shoulder trouble and cramping gradually took control of his match against Navone. This was his earliest Grand Slam defeat in 20 years, but the larger concern is that it no longer looks like one unlucky night. ATP Tour

Decline at this level does not always mean losing every week or suddenly forgetting how to return a serve. It can mean remaining good enough to beat almost anyone while becoming less capable of surviving seven best-of-five matches across two weeks. Djokovic can still produce an extraordinary performance, as Sinner discovered in Melbourne, but his body is now becoming the opponent he cannot study, exhaust or intimidate.

Navone still deserves the victory. He remained composed against the man he grew up watching and finished the match when Djokovic could no longer force his body through another comeback. Explaining the physical collapse should not remove the achievement from the player who stood on the other side of the net.

If “downfall” means Djokovic can no longer play elite tennis, we are not there yet. If it means that reaching the second week of every Grand Slam is no longer automatic and the 25th title is beginning to look less likely with every physical breakdown, then yes, it is already happening.

Sinner left the largest hole in the draw

Sinner withdrew on 21 August after testing his right knee in Monte Carlo and deciding that it needed more recovery time. He had already missed Montreal and Cincinnati, and the US Open is the first major he has skipped since making his Grand Slam debut here in 2019.

This is not a struggling player taking a precautionary week off. Sinner is 44-3 in 2026, has won six titles and last played at Wimbledon, where he collected his fifth Grand Slam by beating Zverev in four sets. ATP Tour

Removing that version of Sinner changes every section of the tournament. Players who might reasonably have hoped for a quarterfinal now see a possible semifinal, while the strongest men left no longer have to calculate how much energy will remain after trying to hit through him for four hours. It is a great opportunity for somebody else to step up, although it comes from the world’s best player being unable to walk onto the court.

Zverev has the opportunity and the same argument waiting for him

For the first time in his career, Zverev arrives in New York as the top seed at a Grand Slam, fresh off winning his maiden major at Roland Garros and coming within one match of making it two in a row before Sinner stopped him in the Wimbledon final.

We already know what people will say if he wins again. His French Open route opened up, Sinner missed New York and Djokovic disappeared on the first night, so apparently somebody should place an asterisk beside the trophy and ask Zverev to apologise.

The annoying part is that the argument will contain some truth. Zverev’s first Slam did come through an unusually open draw, and this one has already lost its world No. 1 and most experienced champion. Winning a second major would still require seven matches, probably including opponents such as Alex de Minaur, Taylor Fritz or Felix Auger-Aliassime before a final against Alcaraz, Shelton, Medvedev or whoever survives the bottom half.

Nobody returned the 2021 trophy to Medvedev because Djokovic arrived tired after chasing the calendar-year Grand Slam. Nobody will remember every injury surrounding this tournament in ten years either.

Zverev has spent long enough being the man who should win these events before finding an inventive way not to. This time he has the title in Paris, a Wimbledon final behind him and the best position in the draw. If he cannot take advantage now, it becomes difficult to imagine a kinder opportunity arriving later.

Alcaraz is the danger nobody can properly measure yet

Alcaraz is the defending US Open champion and completed his career Grand Slam at the Australian Open in January. At full strength, he is the best player left in the draw and possibly the only one who could make the absence of Sinner feel less important.

Unfortunately, nobody knows whether he is at full strength. Alcaraz has not competed since April because of a right wrist injury, missing both Roland Garros and Wimbledon before returning to defend his New York title. He begins against Roman Safiullin with a 22-3 record for the season and four months of competitive rust. ATP Tour

The first week should tell us more than any practice footage. If Alcaraz serves freely, commits to the forehand and reaches the second weekend without another reaction from the wrist, he becomes the favourite regardless of his seeding; until then, picking him requires a medical assumption as much as a tennis one.

Medvedev might remember that he likes New York

Medvedev spent parts of last season looking as though he had forgotten how much he enjoyed winning tennis matches, especially after his chaotic first-round US Open defeat.

His opening match this year was much calmer. The 2021 champion beat Hugo Gaston 6-4, 6-2, 6-4, hitting 34 winners and allowing very little of the usual Medvedev theatre to interrupt the tennis. It was his 34th victory at the tournament and a useful reminder that New York remains the Grand Slam where his game makes the most sense. Reuters

Nobody should pretend we have suddenly recovered the Medvedev who stopped Djokovic in 2021. His recent results do not support that level of optimism, but his section of the draw no longer contains Djokovic and he has already avoided the first-round disaster that removed him last year. For an old US Open winner trying to remember how nice that victory felt, things could have started much worse.

The Americans should at least make this fun

Ben Shelton has won four titles in 2026 and already knows what a deep New York run feels like after reaching the semifinal here in 2023. Taylor Fritz made the final one year later and enters this tournament inside the top 10 after winning in Washington.

Tiafoe is less predictable, which has always been part of the appeal. He can look ordinary for several weeks and then begin feeding off a New York crowd until the entire match becomes a noisy personal event. He is also eighth in the Race to Turin, so this would not be some completely random hometown revival.

Shelton has the form, Fritz owns the best recent American result and Tiafoe probably gives the crowd the most enjoyable evening. The problem is that their section also contains Alcaraz, assuming his wrist permits him to remain there.

Arthur Fils deserves space in this conversation as well. The 22-year-old won Cincinnati immediately before the US Open and could face Alcaraz in the quarterfinals, which is precisely the kind of match that reveals whether a young player is joining the top group or merely visiting it.

Rafael Jódar has the opening we wanted him to get

Earlier this month, we asked who could break the Alcaraz-Sinner monopoly and chose Rafael Jódar as the young player most ready to make the conversation interesting.

He arrives in New York as the 12th seed, having risen from outside the top 500 to the top 15 in less than a year. The 19-year-old reached the Washington final and Montreal semifinal this summer, and he returns to the tournament where he won the junior title in 2024 for his first appearance in the senior main draw. ATP Tour

João Fonseca, the other young player in our previous discussion, withdrew with an abdominal injury. Sinner is missing, Djokovic is gone and several experienced players around Jódar’s part of the draw are carrying fitness concerns. ATP Tour

Jódar does not need to win the US Open to prove anything. Reaching the second week and looking comfortable against an established name would be enough to move him from “interesting future player” into the group that every major draw has to respect. This is the chance we wanted him to get, and now we see whether it arrived too early.

The women’s draw is crowded for better reasons

Sabalenka is defending the title again, rather than trying to regain it. She has won the past two US Opens and is attempting to become the first woman since Serena Williams between 2012 and 2014 to win three consecutive titles in New York.

Her route is not particularly generous. Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova could wait in the quarterfinal, while the rest of the draw contains a 2023 US Open champion in Gauff, this year’s Roland Garros winner Mirra Andreeva and a deep final quarter containing Rybakina, Iga Swiatek, Naomi Osaka, Madison Keys and Belinda Bencic. WTA

Gauff arrives on a six-match winning run and has already shown that she can handle the peculiar pressure of being the American everyone expects to win in New York. Pegula, the highest-seeded American, opened with a comfortable 6-3, 6-2 victory over Elena-Gabriela Ruse and now faces Kenin.

Rybakina has the largest ranking opportunity. Reaching the semifinal guarantees her world No. 1, although she retired against Swiatek in Cincinnati with a leg problem and has been placed in the strongest quarter. WTA

The men’s draw feels open because major names are injured or gone. The women’s draw feels open because six or seven players can reasonably believe they are good enough to win it.

Venus Williams should not be starting after midnight

The US Open advertised Venus Williams against Sofia Kenin as the second match of the Arthur Ashe night session, following Djokovic against Navone. Once the first match lasted four hours and 36 minutes, Venus and Kenin were left waiting until 12:13 a.m., the latest start for a women’s match in tournament history. US Open

Venus is 46, was making her 26th US Open appearance and had been placed in the showpiece match of the night. She lost 6-2, 7-6(6), with the second set providing a much better contest than anybody beginning a match after midnight had a right to produce. She later said the scheduling needed to improve, which was a restrained response. Reuters

So who benefits? The tournament sells a separate evening session containing two famous matches, broadcasters receive several hours of prime-time tennis and spectators are promised two major names on the main court. The risk falls almost entirely on the players in the second match, who warm up at a sensible hour and then sit around waiting to discover whether they will begin before midnight.

The long Djokovic match was unexpected, but the scheduling problem was not. Placing a women’s match behind a potentially five-set men’s match always creates this possibility, particularly when the night session starts at 7 p.m.

ATP and WTA events introduced rules intended to stop matches beginning after 11 p.m., including moving an unstarted match to another court when necessary. Grand Slams control their own schedules, but the sensible options are hardly mysterious: put the women’s match first, begin the session earlier or move the second match when the first is still nowhere near finished at 10:30. A 12:13 a.m. start gives the tournament a strange record and some social-media clips, while giving the players nothing useful. ATP Tour

Final Verdict

Zverev is our men’s pick because he arrives as the top seed, has already won a major this season and no longer has Sinner or Djokovic blocking the route. Alcaraz remains the better player at full health, but picking him after four months without a competitive match requires more faith in his wrist than we currently have.

Medvedev is the experienced outsider, Shelton is the American with the strongest current form and Jódar is the young player we most want to see reach the second week.

On the women’s side, the pick remains Sabalenka until somebody removes her. Gauff, Rybakina, Pegula, Swiatek and Andreeva make this far less comfortable than the men’s prediction, which should make the women’s tournament the more reliable half to watch.

The US Open can survive without several of its biggest players, and an unexpected champion might be exactly what the men’s tour needs. It should still find a way to create that excitement without asking Venus Williams and Sofia Kenin to begin work after midnight.