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Jannik Sinner will not defend his place at the top of the men’s game at Flushing Meadows. The world number one withdrew from the US Open on Friday with the right knee injury that has kept him off court since he beat Alexander Zverev in the Wimbledon final, and within hours Britain’s Jack Draper had joined him, ruling himself out of the year’s final Grand Slam with the bone bruise in his left arm that has now cost him all four majors in 2026.
“Even though I have been working hard with my team and my medical staff, we have now had to make the difficult decision that I will not be able to compete at the US Open this year,” Sinner said. “We have realized that I still need more time to recover from my right knee issue.”
Sinner’s season ends in Monte Carlo, not New York
The 24-year-old Italian has not hit a competitive ball since 12 July, when he retained his Wimbledon title against Zverev for a fifth major. He skipped the Canadian Open, pulled out of the Cincinnati Open on 9 August after a medical appointment in Milan to assess the knee, and withdrew from the US Open mixed doubles draw. The final call came after he returned to practice at his base in Monte Carlo and found the joint would not hold up to full-intensity work.
It closes a strange year for a player who was 37-3 through May. Sinner won Monte-Carlo — his first big title on clay, beating Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets — but lost in the Australian Open semi-finals and, remarkably, in the second round of the French Open. Wimbledon was his only major final of 2026. He remains world number one on paper, but with 2,000 points from last year’s US Open final defence about to disappear, the arithmetic is turning against him while he sits out.
The bigger loss is the fixture that never happens. Sinner and Alcaraz met in three finals in 2025 — Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open, where the Spaniard won 6-2, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 to take back the number one ranking. Between them they won all eight majors across 2024 and 2025. In 2026 they have played once, in Monte Carlo. Alcaraz missed the French Open and Wimbledon with a right wrist problem; now Sinner misses New York. The two best players in the world will have gone a full calendar year without facing each other at a Grand Slam.
Draper’s lost year gets worse
Draper’s withdrawal is the bleaker story. The 24-year-old from Sutton has managed just 15 matches all season. The bone bruise in his dominant left arm has troubled him for more than a year — it forced him out of the 2025 US Open, where he was the fifth seed — and a knee injury wiped out his clay-court swing. He has now missed the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open in the same season.
His comeback lasted two matches. First-round exits in Montreal and then in Cincinnati, where he lost 6-3 7-5 to Martin Landaluce, convinced him and his team that more time away was the only option. Ranked 143 in the world, he would have needed a wildcard to make the main draw at all — two years after reaching the semi-finals here as a top-five player.
He has been unusually candid about the toll. “There’s a level of chronic pain that’s always with you,” Draper told the Guardian. “When you’ve got that on your playing arm — this is my life, this is my career, you know?” Of his ranking collapse, he added: “The mountain seems very, very big.”
A thinned field and a wider warning
Seeding will be finalised from the ATP rankings on Monday 24 August, six days before the main draw begins on Sunday 30 August. Sinner’s absence reshapes the top of the sheet:
- Alexander Zverev becomes top seed, climbing to world number two on Monday
- Carlos Alcaraz, the defending champion, is seeded second in his first tournament since April
- Felix Auger-Aliassime takes the third seeding, with Novak Djokovic promoted to fourth
- Holger Rune is still absent, having not played since rupturing an Achilles in October 2025
- Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, the 27th-ranked player, is out with a back injury
For Zverev, a first Grand Slam title after three final defeats has rarely looked more available. For Djokovic, chasing a 25th major at 39, a quarter of the draw has just been cleared. And for Alcaraz, four months of inactivity is a genuine unknown against a field that has been playing all summer.
The common thread is attrition. A compressed calendar of expanded two-week Masters events has produced a season in which the world number one, the defending champion and the former British number one have all spent months on the sidelines. Alcaraz got back. Sinner and Draper are still waiting.
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Sources: [ATP Tour](https://www.atptour.com/en/news/sinner-us-open-2026-withdrawal), [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/tennis/news/2026-us-open-jannik-sinner-withdraws-knee-injury/), [Sky Sports](https://www.skysports.com/tennis/news/33694/13575532/jack-draper-british-star-ruled-out-of-the-us-open-due-to-ongoing-injury-woes), [Yahoo Sports](https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/jack-draper-pulls-us-open-162447346.html), [Tennis365 seeds](https://www.tennis365.com/tennis-news/projected-us-open-2026-mens-seeds-zverev-alcaraz-djokovic-move-up-sinner-absence), [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/2026/08/09/cincinnati-open-jannik-sinner-knee-injury/9c6814fa-9437-11f1-9ef9-1be722184483_story.html)
One note on a claim I could not fully verify: the closing line about the expanded Masters calendar is analysis, not a sourced quote — cut it if SportsPortal wants strictly reported material only.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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