E-Paper
No Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner in Cincinnati, but plenty of danger for Novak Djokovic
Novak Djokovic returns to the Cincinnati Open this week. Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have both been ruled out.
Novak Djokovic returns to the Cincinnati Open this week with an opportunity he has rarely seen in recent years: a wide-open path to a Masters 1000 title. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, who have shared ten of the last eleven Grand Slam titles between them, have both withdrawn. Sinner is nursing a right knee injury that has kept him off the court since his Wimbledon final win over Alexander Zverev in July. Alcaraz continues to manage a wrist problem that has sidelined him since April's Barcelona Open, wiping out his entire clay and grass seasons. For the first time in a long while, Djokovic walks into a hard-court draw without his two biggest tormentors anywhere in the field.
That is the good news. It does not mean easy sailing.
A gauntlet, not a bye
Djokovic, the third seed, opens against Thiago Agustin Tirante or Jan Choinski, then likely meets Matteo Arnaldi, Jack Draper or Martin Landaluce in the third round. A probable last-16 clash with Jakub Mensik, now seeded 14th, or Luciano Darderi would follow, before a projected quarter-final against fifth seed Alex de Minaur or Jiri Lehecka. Alexander Zverev, the new French Open champion and top seed in Cincinnati, sits in the same half and looms as a likely semi-final opponent, with Dino Prizmic tucked further back in that same section.
None of those names is a heavyweight, but their youth has proven enough to best him in recent years. Draper stunned him in an epic three-set battle at Indian Wells in March, his first career win over the Serb. Prizmic, then a 20-year-old qualifier, dismantled him in Rome in May after Djokovic cruised through the opening set. Weeks later, 19-year-old João Fonseca (seeded 23rd in Cincinnati, though in a different quarter) came back from two sets down to knock Djokovic out of Roland Garros in the third round. And it was Mensik, not Sinner or Alcaraz, who denied Djokovic the 2025 Miami Open title, winning both sets in tiebreaks. Every one of those four is in the Cincinnati field this week.
So while Sinner and Alcaraz are gone, the sport's next wave is not. This season, Djokovic has lost not only to the two generational stars who have kept him from Grand Slam number 25 — Alcaraz in a four-set Australian Open final, Sinner in a Wimbledon semi-final — but to a string of players a decade or more his junior. Getting through this draw will take something like the hard-court form he has repeatedly found in Ohio: he won the Cincinnati title in 2018, 2020 and 2023, the last of those an all-time classic over Alcaraz that ran three hours and forty-nine minutes. He will need that level again, against opponents who have already shown they are not intimidated by his name.
Cincinnati would not be the last trial
Should Djokovic get through it, the reward is bigger than a trophy. Since the Masters 1000 era began in 1990, no man has won the US Open after skipping both the Canadian Open and Cincinnati that same summer. Sinner and Alcaraz have now done exactly that. Sinner pulled out of Montreal for extra recovery time before his knee flared up again, and Alcaraz has not played a competitive match since April. Whichever of them makes it to New York will be attempting something no man has managed in thirty-six years of Masters-era tennis: winning the year's last major with no rhythm and barely any match play behind him.
Djokovic has the chance to build exactly that rhythm this week. A deep run through this field would not be a formality handed to him by two absent rivals. It would be proof, earned against the very players who have troubled him most this year, that his game still holds up under real pressure. Come through that Herculean test, and he will arrive in New York with the momentum and conviction to succeed in the last remaining trial of the year.
None of that changes what the record already shows. He is fifth in the ATP rankings at 39, still tied with Margaret Court on 24 Grand Slam titles, and 2026 has delivered a familiar mix of near-misses and unfamiliar shocks: a final lost to Alcaraz in Melbourne, a stunning third-round exit to Fonseca in Paris, a semi-final defeat to Sinner at Wimbledon that he described, in his own clipped way, as "good but not good enough." Most players his age would happily take a Grand Slam final and a semi-final in the same season. Djokovic still treats them as unfinished business.
That restlessness is what makes this week worth watching. Cincinnati offers no guarantees. It will be a trial by fire; the draw has made sure of that. Lose early, and the questions, the doubts, will only grow louder. But win, and it could herald his strongest US Open showing in years.
