Daniil Medvedev built a game that looks like nobody else's. He returns from six metres behind the baseline, lets the ball die on his flat, long groundstrokes, and turns a rally into a war of patience until the other man blinks. It is deep-court defence dressed up as attrition, and for one September night in New York it broke the best of all. In the 2021 US Open final he beat Novak Djokovic in straight sets, denying Djokovic the first calendar Grand Slam in men's tennis since 1969 and taking his 1 major.
The rise did not stop there. On 28 February 2022 he reached world No. 1, and he holds the 2020 ATP Finals crown among 24 career titles. He also owns a hard-luck ledger: four more Grand Slam finals lost, at the Australian Open in 2021, 2022 and 2024 and the US Open again in 2023, the last two of those slipping away after he had led by two sets, one to Jannik Sinner. Russian by birth, he competes as a neutral athlete, without flag or anthem.
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 taleZero warm-up matches. Carlos Alcaraz confirmed on Thursday that he returns at the US Open, four months after a right wrist injury stopped him in Barcelona, and that he gets there without a single tournament in between. The announcement came as a joint Instagram post with the journalist Fabrizio Romano, carried on Alcaraz's own account and signed off with four words: "Ready to come back." He is the defending champion in New York, where the main draw starts on 30 August.
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