Zverev Won the 2026 US Open, and the Missing Players Are Not His Problem

The US Open is finally over, and our completely unbiased pick Alexander Zverev won it. When Jannik Sinner withdrew and Novak Djokovic went out on the opening night, we wrote that Zverev had been given an unusually good chance to win his second Grand Slam title. He spent the first two rounds making that prediction look rather stupid, recovered, stopped dropping sets, and eventually beat Ben Shelton in the final.

Shelton arrived with almost the entire stadium behind him after a much harder route through the draw, including a five-set win over Carlos Alcaraz that finished at 3:33 a.m. and a four-set semifinal against Frances Tiafoe. By the fourth set of the final he looked drained, while Zverev looked like a man who had spent the previous week waiting for everybody else to exhaust one another.

Of course Shelton's exhaustion and Zverev's kinder draw belong in the story, yet Zverev still won the US Open because he was the best player left in it, Elena Rybakina deservedly beat Aryna Sabalenka for the women's title, and the two weeks between those results gave us far more good tennis than the injuries suggested they would.

Quick Answer

Alexander Zverev beat Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6(2), 5-7, 6-2 to win his first US Open and second Grand Slam title of 2026. He did not have to beat an injured Sinner or a fully fit Alcaraz, but he still finished the year's four majors with a 25-2 record, won Roland Garros and the US Open, reached the Wimbledon final and made the Australian Open semifinal.

Zverev is not world No. 1 yet because he remains second in the official ATP rankings, 1,810 points behind Sinner, although the US Open title moved him 700 points ahead in the season-long Race to Turin and made him the leading candidate for year-end No. 1, especially with Sinner defending far more ranking points during the remaining tournaments.

Elena Rybakina won the women's final 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 against Sabalenka and leaves New York as the new world No. 1. Shelton lost his first major final, but beating Alcaraz and reaching Sunday made this the tournament in which his potential became much harder to dismiss.

Zverev controlled the final without making it completely easy

Calling a four-set Grand Slam final easy would be unfair to Shelton, who recovered from two sets down, broke Zverev for the first time and forced a fourth. The match still felt controlled for most of the afternoon because Zverev gave him very little from the baseline, served through the loudest moments and played an almost perfect second-set tiebreak while the crowd was chanting “USA! USA!” around him.

Shelton's route probably mattered because his quarterfinal against Alcaraz lasted four hours and 28 minutes and ended later than any previous US Open match, then he needed another four sets to beat Tiafoe. Zverev had endured his own two five-set matches at the start of the tournament, but followed them with four consecutive straight-set wins before the final, so the difference in energy by Sunday was hardly surprising.

Even with that difference in energy, fatigue cannot explain everything because Zverev had beaten Shelton in all five of their previous meetings, and the final extended that record to 6-0. Shelton's serve can make almost anybody uncomfortable, but Zverev is 6-foot-6, returns well for his height and has enough power to stop Shelton controlling every short exchange. A tired Shelton was facing one of the worst possible opponents for him, which is a more useful explanation than pretending the crowd should have carried him through another four hours.

The crowd certainly tried, and Zverev later joked that 99.9 per cent of the stadium wanted Shelton to win, although he also said the New York audience remained fair. Their support helped Shelton find the third set, but once his legs went in the fourth there was not much the noise could do.

He did not beat Sinner or Alcaraz, but what was he supposed to do?

The criticism was already waiting for Zverev by the time he lifted the trophy because Sinner missed the tournament with a knee injury, Alcaraz was playing his first event in more than four months after a wrist problem, and Zverev did not face a Top 20 seed before the final. Those are all fair points, and there is no reason to pretend his route was as difficult as it could have been.

But what the hell was Zverev supposed to do with those facts: repair Sinner's knee, move Alcaraz into his half of the draw or lose out of politeness until a more fashionable opponent survived long enough to meet him? He could only beat the player standing on the other side of the net, which he did seven times.

We were sceptical about Zverev when asking who could break the Alcaraz-Sinner monopoly, because his Roland Garros route had also opened up and Sinner then beat him for a tenth consecutive time in the Wimbledon final. The criticism was reasonable then, but two major titles, another major final and a semifinal at the fourth make it much less comfortable now. Zverev has not proved that he is better than healthy versions of Sinner and Alcaraz; he has proved that he is the man most likely to collect the biggest titles when either of them leaves the door open.

Beating both men at full strength would obviously mean more, although this remains an excellent season because plenty of players have received kind draws and found some inventive way to waste them, while Zverev received two major opportunities in 2026 and won both.

Zverev is not world No. 1 yet, although he can finish the year there

Two ranking tables make the conversation more confusing than it needs to be because the normal ATP ranking covers the previous 52 weeks, where Zverev remains No. 2 with a gap of 1,810 points to Sinner, while the Race to Turin counts only results from the current season and eventually becomes the year-end ranking. Zverev now leads that race with 8,650 points, 700 ahead of Sinner and more than 4,000 ahead of third-placed Shelton.

So no, Zverev cannot stay No. 1 until December because he has not reached No. 1 yet. He can get there, and the ATP's post-US Open calculation shows why the opportunity is serious: Zverev has 1,080 ranking points to defend for the rest of the season, while Sinner has 3,550. If Sinner continues missing tournaments and Zverev keeps reaching the late rounds, the weekly ranking can catch up with the race.

Zverev gave a fairly honest answer when he was asked whether he is the best player in the world: with Sinner injured and Alcaraz returning after four months away, he said that right now he probably is, while with everybody healthy he still puts Sinner ahead. I think that is a reasonable assessment because tennis does not pause the rankings until every contender feels perfect, so the best available player still has to take the points, and nobody did that better across the 2026 majors.

Shelton earned the attention before the American media makes it unbearable

I felt bad for Shelton by the end because his tournament deserved more than becoming the final step in somebody else's story. He beat Alcaraz in the best men's match of the fortnight, handled the emotional comedown well enough to beat Tiafoe two days later and became the first Black American man to reach the US Open final since Arthur Ashe in 1972. At 23, he now has a major final, a huge serve, a career-high ranking around the very top of the tour and enough confidence to survive the sort of matches that usually expose an exciting player who is not ready.

The parts Shelton still needs to improve became easier to see against Zverev because his backhand, while better than it was, can still be pushed around; the serve gives him cheap points, but the ground game does not always offer a second solution when a good returner gets the ball back; and his explosive style takes an enormous amount of energy across seven best-of-five matches. Those are normal problems for a 23-year-old reaching his first major final, although they also explain why one great run does not mean the development is finished.

My concern is the machinery that appears around any American man who gets close to ending the major drought. American sports coverage can turn a promising player into a superstar before he has won the thing everybody is discussing, especially when the player is young, powerful, charismatic and extremely easy to market. European coverage has its own problems, but it is usually more willing to make a player win something first.

Shelton has earned the attention, although he does not need every match presented as the beginning of a new American era. Let him improve the backhand, learn how to shorten a few of these wars and return to another final without carrying 23 years of somebody else's drought onto the court.

Rybakina beat the player we picked and deserved the title

Before the tournament, Sabalenka and Coco Gauff received much of the obvious attention, while we picked Sabalenka to win the women's title. Rybakina made that prediction wrong in the most convincing way available: she came through Coco Gauff in the semifinal, beat the two-time defending champion in the final and left New York with the trophy and the No. 1 ranking.

The final became a proper heavyweight baseline match once Sabalenka took the second set and had enough power to make the momentum feel dangerous, but Rybakina reset in the decider, continued serving aggressively and handled Sabalenka's pace without retreating into a defensive match she was unlikely to win. The 6-2 third set was not a collapse handed to her; Rybakina kept taking the ball early and made the stronger player look hurried.

She now has the Australian Open and US Open titles in the same season, three majors in total and the No. 1 position, which is quite a lot of evidence for a player who still seems to enter major conversations after the louder names have already been discussed.

Alcaraz still produced some of the best tennis of the tournament

Alcaraz played his first competitive event since April and still reached the quarterfinal, where he and Shelton produced four hours and 28 minutes of ridiculous tennis. Shelton hit serves at 149 mph, Alcaraz recovered from losing the middle two sets, and the match went to a deciding tiebreak before finishing at 3:33 a.m.

The wrist injury eventually mattered because four months without match play is a serious disadvantage at a Grand Slam, however beautiful the tennis looks for two or three sets. I still think a fully healthy Alcaraz, placed in a slightly less exhausting part of the draw, had enough level to reach the final, although there is obviously no way to prove it now; getting this far immediately after such a long absence already says enough about the gap between him and most of the field.

Sinner remains the more complete week-to-week player when healthy, Alcaraz can produce the most absurd level in individual stretches, and Zverev has now assembled the best major season of 2026. Those three have separated themselves for different reasons, even if only two of them had been treated as a proper group before New York.

Medvedev was calmer, while Fonseca never made it onto the court

Daniil Medvedev avoided another full New York breakdown and won his first three matches in straight sets before Tiafoe beat him 7-6(1), 6-4, 7-6(6) in the fourth round, which is a respectable result and still difficult to watch if you remember what Medvedev once looked like on these courts. The strange swings in mood and form remain, and at times he appears one bad line call away from deciding that professional tennis was a clerical error, but this tournament was more ordinary disappointment than disaster.

João Fonseca should not be grouped with the young players who underperformed because he withdrew before the tournament with an abdominal injury, which was disappointing after his French Open quarterfinal but tells us nothing about whether his tennis was ready for New York. The better young-player story belonged to Shelton, and now we need to see whether he can keep producing this level when the tour moves on from New York.

The draw still gave us plenty beyond the finalists, with Tiafoe coming back from two sets down against Alex Michelsen in a four-hour, 38-minute quarterfinal, Zverev surviving two tight tiebreaks against Karen Khachanov, Rybakina coming back against Gauff, and Sabalenka escaping Linda Noskova in two tiebreaks before reaching the final, so whatever the injuries changed at the end, they did not leave us with a boring tournament.

Zverev's words about his mother were the best part of the ending

Zverev's interviews after the final were better than the usual collection of sponsor thanks and statements about believing one point at a time. He spoke about being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at four, when doctors told his family that life and sport would be severely limited, and credited his mother Irina with refusing to accept that the illness should decide what he was allowed to become.

Her position was simple, “this illness will not define us,” and Zverev now has two Grand Slam titles, an Olympic gold medal and a genuine chance to become world No. 1, so it is difficult to imagine a better answer to what those doctors told the family.

He was equally direct about his tennis, saying that he does not consider himself a naturally gifted player in the way some of his rivals are and that most of his game came from hours on the court, in the gym and on the track. Whether you agree with that assessment or think a 6-foot-6 athlete with his movement is being a little modest, the work is impossible to argue with. He went 25-2 at the majors this year and became the only man to reach all four semifinals.

For me, that part of the victory meant more than another argument over whether the draw was difficult enough, because his mother did not let a diagnosis decide the ceiling when he was four and he did not let the losses in his first three Grand Slam finals decide it later.

Final Verdict

The 2026 US Open gave Zverev the opportunity we said he needed to take, and he took it. Shelton was tired, Sinner was absent, Alcaraz was returning from injury and the path was kinder than many Grand Slam routes, but none of those facts obliges the winner to apologise for winning.

Rybakina deserves the same attention after beating Sabalenka and taking the world No. 1 ranking, while Shelton leaves without the trophy but with much stronger evidence that he belongs near the top of the men's game. The American hype will now become unbearable for a while, because of course it will, but the player underneath it is very good.

Zverev is still world No. 2 today, but he leads the race for year-end No. 1, was the best player across the four majors and has a real chance to finish the year on top if Sinner cannot return at full strength during the final part of the season. He does not need to lose matches on purpose until everybody else is healthy enough to approve of it.