Carlos Alcaraz was scheduled to undergo the medical examination that will effectively decide his US Open title defence on Friday. Twenty-four hours later, neither the player nor his team has said anything about it. The silence is unusual, and it lands at the end of a week in which the evidence about the Spaniard’s right wrist has pointed in two directly opposing directions.
Alcaraz has not played a competitive match since April, when he felt his wrist give way during a first-round win over Otto Virtanen at the Barcelona Open. The diagnosis was an inflamed tendon sheath. What followed was the worst run of his career: withdrawals from Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros, Queen’s Club and Wimbledon, and the loss of both his world No. 1 ranking and any chance of defending the clay and grass titles that had made him the sport’s dominant figure a year ago.
On Thursday, the entry list for the Canadian Open was published without his name. The tournament in Montreal, which begins in early August, had been widely expected to be his comeback event; Spanish national broadcaster RNE had earlier reported it as one of three options alongside Los Cabos and Washington. A field containing 71 of the top 72 men in the ATP rankings will now assemble without the man who was No. 1 in January. That much is fact. The interpretation is where it splits.
CARLOS ALCARAZ — THE STATE OF PLAY
Ranking: projected to fall to world No. 3 on Monday 13 July
Injury: inflamed tendon sheath, right wrist
Sustained: Barcelona Open, first round, mid-April 2026
Last match played: Barcelona Open, April 2026
Tournaments missed: Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros, Queen’s, Wimbledon, Canadian Open
Return date: not announced
Likely comeback event: Cincinnati Masters (reported, not confirmed)
Defending champion at: US Open, Cincinnati Masters
Points to defend: 3,000
US Open 2026 main draw begins: Sunday 30 August
One reading, advanced by outlets close to the player, is that Montreal was always expendable — that Alcaraz has entered Canada only twice in his career, that skipping a two-week event buys him a fortnight of uninterrupted preparation, and that the plan remains a return at the Cincinnati Masters before New York. On this account the caution is the point, not the problem.
The other reading is considerably darker. Alcaraz posted training footage to Instagram on Thursday captioned “on the right path,” showing him striking soft forehands with the injured hand. Rather than reassure, it alarmed. Boris Becker, watching the same video, wrote that the Spaniard remained a long way from a return. Tennis365, which first reported that the rehabilitation was progressing more slowly than his team had hoped, went further still, raising the prospect that he may not play again in 2026.
Both readings rest on the same clip. That is the difficulty with rehabilitation stories, and the reason the scan matters more than the footage. The stakes are severe and precisely quantifiable. Alcaraz won both the Cincinnati Masters — beating Jannik Sinner in the final — and the US Open last year, and has 3,000 ranking points to defend across the two events.
He will already slip to world No. 3 on Monday, overtaken by Alexander Zverev, having begun the season at No. 1 and completed the Career Grand Slam at the Australian Open in January. A failure to appear at Flushing Meadows, where the main draw begins on Sunday 30 August, would leave one of the most decorated players of his generation ranked outside the top five by the autumn.
There is also the longer shadow. Several pundits have urged Alcaraz not to rush, pointing to the wrist injuries that disrupted the careers of Dominic Thiem and Juan Martín del Potro — a comparison that would once have seemed alarmist and now does not.
The optimistic case is not without foundation. The Spanish newspaper La Verdad reported this week that a positive result from Friday’s examination would clear Alcaraz to resume full-intensity training at his academy in El Palmar from Monday, beginning what amounts to a compressed pre-season. Throughout his rehabilitation he has trained left-handed to maintain neuromuscular activation while the right wrist healed, and has progressively reintroduced right-handed hitting over the past fortnight.
If the clearance came on Friday, it has not been announced. If it did not, that has not been announced either. For a player whose team has been consistent in refusing to set a return date, the absence of news is not necessarily bad news. But with seven weeks until the US Open and no competitive match in nearly four months, it is no longer neutral news either.
