Carlos Alcaraz opens the defense of his US Open title on Monday against Roman Safiullin, and the comparisons being reached for are the wrong ones. The Spaniard has not played a singles match since April 14, when he beat Otto Virtanen in his opening match at the Barcelona Open and then came off the tournament with a right wrist injury before his second round.
That is four and a half months without a competitive singles set. He missed Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the entire North American hard-court swing. He arrives at Flushing Meadows seeded second, defending a title, and chasing an eighth major.
The two precedents most often cited are real. Roger Federer won the 2017 Australian Open after six months out with a knee injury. Rafael Nadal won the 2022 Australian Open after roughly six months out with a foot problem. Both layoffs were longer than the one Alcaraz has just finished.
What the precedents actually included. Neither man walked into the major cold. Nadal entered a 250-level event in Melbourne the week before and won it without dropping a set, giving him five competitive singles matches at full length before the first round in Melbourne Park. Federer played the Hopman Cup in Perth, a mixed team event where the singles rubbers are played as standard matches.
He beat Dan Evans and Richard Gasquet there and lost narrowly to Alexander Zverev. By the time each reached the major, the question of whether the body would hold for three sets had already been answered on court. Alcaraz has answered a smaller version of that question. He played the US Open mixed doubles championship with Serena Williams, winning a first-round match and losing in the quarterfinals to Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli. Sets in that event were played to four games.
Two abbreviated doubles matches on the tournament’s own courts is preparation of a different order than a tour-level singles title.
The defense itself is the harder part. No man has won consecutive US Open titles since Federer in 2008, the last of five straight. Every champion since — del Potro, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Cilic, Wawrinka, Thiem, Medvedev, Alcaraz himself — has failed to hold it. That record predates the current draw and has survived players in far better rhythm than Alcaraz is in now.
The opponent is not a formality. Safiullin is ranked No. 98 but reached the fourth round at Wimbledon this summer, beating Andrey Rublev and Joao Fonseca before losing to Novak Djokovic in four sets. He beat Alcaraz at the Paris Masters in 2023; Alcaraz won their other meeting in Paris the following year. The head-to-head is level at 1-1.
Alcaraz owns a 24-3 record at Flushing Meadows and won the tournament in 2022 and 2025. He won the Australian Open in January. With Jannik Sinner out of the draw with a knee injury and Zverev installed as top seed, the path is more open than it has been in three years.
He and Safiullin are scheduled second in the day session on Arthur Ashe Stadium, following Aryna Sabalenka and Camila Osorio at 11:30 a.m. EDT.
