Repollo
On August 21, 2026, world No. 1 Jannik Sinner withdrew from the US Open citing a persistent right-knee injury, ending his title defense and handing Carlos Alcaraz the clear favorite’s role at the year’s final Slam. Alcaraz himself called Sinner’s absence ‘kind of a weird situation,’ and with the tournament now in the Round of 16 the debate has already started. Purists say a Slam missing the World No. 1 — the man Alcaraz has traded every major final with in 2025-26 — is a compromised trophy: whoever wins avoided the one rival who’d actually have contested it. Defenders counter that injuries are part of tennis, the remaining field (Djokovic, Fritz, Shelton, Medvedev) is genuinely deep, and history never asterisks a Slam because a top seed sat out.