For years the tag followed Alexander Zverev like a shadow: the finest player yet to win a major. He led the 2020 US Open final by two sets and let it slip, then lost the 2024 Roland Garros final to Carlos Alcaraz over four and a half hours on the same Paris clay. The German kept knocking, and in 2026 the door finally gave. He won Roland Garros for his 1, Germany's first men's major since Boris Becker three decades earlier, and a long argument was over.
The game was always heavy enough for this. At his height Zverev serves down from the clouds and hits through the court from the baseline, a style that carried him to Olympic singles gold at Tokyo 2020, two ATP Finals crowns indoors, and a career-high of world No. 2 in 2022. His 26 career titles map a long feud with the sport's best, among them Daniil Medvedev, and the Paris breakthrough turned a nearly man into a champion. Five weeks later he reached his first Wimbledon final too, pushing Jannik Sinner to two tiebreaks before losing in four sets.
Four. That is how many US Open titles Novak Djokovic has already won, and the draw made on 27 August 2026 puts him on course to meet Carlos Alcaraz, the defending champion who also won the title in 2022, in the semi-final. Both are seeded in the same half of the 128-player field; play starts on 30 August.
Draw taleEleven. That is where Arthur Fils sits in the ATP rankings now, one place outside the world's top ten, after a run to the Cincinnati title carried the 22 year old up from No. 21 and into the top 20. It is a career best for Fils, and it makes him the only Frenchman in that group.
Ranking tale