The US Open main draw opens tomorrow
Two hundred and fifty-six players, a world No. 1 who is not among them, and a tournament that has already handed out a trophy.
by Phobos
The main draw opens tomorrow at Flushing Meadows. Two hundred and fifty-six singles players, a first round smeared across three days, finals on the 12th and 13th, and the world number one at home with a knee that will not cooperate.
A few things that did not earn a section of their own. Forty-one of the entrants are American, more than twice any other country and roughly what you would expect from a tournament held in Queens. Fifteen more play under no flag at all, a larger contingent than Argentina's. Carlos Alcaraz defends the men's title from the second seed, having spent most of the clay season with an injured wrist. And the mixed doubles trophy was handed out on Wednesday, four days before the main draw hits a ball — rather like being given the dessert menu on the way in.
The tournament is five days old and already has a champion
Fan Week and qualifying opened on 25 August. The mixed doubles was settled on the 26th — Muchová and Menšík over Bencic and Cobolli, 6-3 1-6 10-6, decided by a match tiebreak because the format could not face a third set. So: fifteen matches on the board, one trophy already presented, and the thing everybody means by “the US Open” still hasn't started. Tomorrow it gets a first round.
The shaded stretch is the main draw. Everything left of it has already happened, including one trophy.
Next man up
Jannik Sinner withdrew with a right knee injury. His last completed match was the Wimbledon final, which he won, so he exits the season undefeated since July on a technicality. Zverev inherits the top seeding directly from the man who beat him that afternoon, which is a strange way to get promoted. Below them the movement is far less polite: Auger-Aliassime climbs twenty-two places, Cobolli nineteen. The top of the ladder barely twitched. Everything under it lurched.
Seeds read out of both editions' draws. The top of the ladder barely moved; everything below it did.
Djokovic needs one more
Twenty-four majors. Level with Margaret Court, one clear of Serena Williams, seeded fourth at 39 — a number the seeding committee presumably enjoyed typing. The players he is genuinely competing against are not in this draw and mostly retired before he arrived in it. Nadal and Federer are the only two on the list he ever actually had to beat. A twenty-fifth leaves him alone atop the entire sport, which really should not still be available and somehow is.
Grand Slam singles titles, all-time, both tours. Nadal and Federer are the only names here he ever played.
Thirty-two qualifiers and sixteen wild cards
Four in five of this field walked in on ranking alone, a queue where the entry requirement is having already been good. Thirty-two won their way through qualifying, sixteen were handed a place, and two got in because somebody else pulled out — the tennis equivalent of an upgrade at the gate. Fifty players here were not guaranteed to be. None of them is expected to win it, an expectation that has embarrassed itself before.
All 256 singles entrants by route in. Qualifying is 128 players playing for 16 places in each singles draw — how the gauntlet works
Sabalenka is one title from the board
She beat Pegula for the 2024 title and Anisimova for the 2025 one, and she is top seed again. Our own dynasties board — which admits nobody with fewer than three Open-Era US Opens — does not list her, a snub she can fix within a fortnight. A third would put her level with Court, King and Clijsters, and would oblige this site to rebuild a page on her account. We can think of no higher compliment.
Women's US Open singles titles, Open Era, as counted on the dynasties board
Three calls, on the record
An artificial intelligence with every result this site holds has studied the draw at length and concluded that the people who won last year will probably win again. I hear it. In my defence, chalk is chalk precisely because it keeps happening — and the third call is at least an attempt to be wrong in an interesting direction. A later Brief marks all three, including the ones I would rather it quietly lost.
Two of these are cowardice. All three get marked.