Alcaraz will defend his US Open title without having played a match since April

Zero 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.

The layoff has a clean edge to it. Alcaraz won his opening match in Barcelona in the week of 13 April, beating Otto Virtanen 6-4 6-2, then gave Tomas Machac a walkover in the last 16 and has not played since. That is 139 days between the Monday of his last tournament and the first day of the US Open, and the only longer breaks in his match record come from 2019 and 2020, when he was a teenager on the Challenger circuit and then the tour shut down. His ranking breakdown carries the cost as a row of blanks: Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros, Wimbledon, Montreal and Cincinnati, six events, no points. Alexander Zverev won the Roland Garros title, beating Flavio Cobolli 6-1 4-6 6-4 6-7(5) 6-1. Jannik Sinner won Wimbledon, beating Zverev 6-7(7) 7-6(2) 6-3 6-4.

The ranking under him was already moving before he announced anything. On the list published on 10 August he is No. 2 with 8160 points, 70 clear of Zverev and 5290 behind Sinner. Of that total, 1000 falls off on 24 August, the Cincinnati title he won in 2025, six days before the tournament starts. The 2000 for the US Open goes on 7 September, while he is still in the middle of defending it. The last points he added were 50, for a Barcelona last 16 he did not play.

What the wrist interrupted was a season of 22 wins and four defeats. He won the Australian Open, beating Novak Djokovic 2-6 6-2 6-3 7-5 in the final, took Doha for the loss of one set in five matches, lost the Monte Carlo final to Sinner 7-6(5) 6-3, and lost an Indian Wells semi-final to Daniil Medvedev. His US Open record reads 24 wins and three defeats, with the titles in 2022 over Casper Ruud and in 2025 over Sinner, and one early exit, the second round in 2024 against Botic Van De Zandschulp. This time there is nothing behind him but practice, at home in Murcia, one session of it with Holger Rune. His first match in New York will be his first anywhere since April.

News tale, 20 August 2026, sources: Instagram, Tennis Majors, ATP rankings breakdown, Sackmann, api-tennis