The last stop on the ATP calendar before the US Open is a 250-level tournament played on a university campus in North Carolina, and it has become the most closely watched event of Carlos Alcaraz’s season without him having entered it.
Alcaraz came out of the Cincinnati Open on Aug. 4, ending the plan that had shaped his summer. Cincinnati was where he was to return, where he was defending a title and 1,000 ranking points, and where his team had judged the conditions and the calendar position most forgiving for a first match back. The withdrawal removed the last Masters 1000 event from the schedule and left an absence that now stretches toward four months.
He has not played a competitive match since the Barcelona Open in April, when a right wrist injury ended his week and, as it turned out, his clay and grass seasons with it. Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros, Queen’s Club, Wimbledon and Montreal all went by without him. It is the longest injury absence of his career, and it has been managed with a caution his team has never publicly wavered from.
That leaves Winston-Salem. The ATP 250 at Wake Forest University occupies the strangest slot on the calendar — qualifying begins Aug. 16, which places the tournament inside the second week of Cincinnati and directly against the run-in to New York. Its 48-player draw is built for exactly this situation. The event has long marketed its court conditions and lighting as a deliberate match for Flushing Meadows, and it survives on players who need matches more than they need rest. Andy Murray has played it. So has John Isner. So, once, has Alcaraz.
That was 2021, when he was 18 and ranked outside the top 50, and he reached the semifinals. He has not returned since. As his ranking climbed the 250s disappeared from his schedule entirely, which is what makes the current speculation notable — a player of his standing does not enter a tournament at this level unless something has gone wrong with the plan above it.
Reporting in Spain has suggested his team is weighing a wild card request for the event. Nothing has been confirmed. Alcaraz has not spoken about it, no statement has come from his camp, and the tournament has not announced him. The wild cards at Winston-Salem are typically among the last entries revealed, often in the days immediately before play, which means an answer may not arrive until the middle of the month. Until then the report is a report, and the entry lists show him in one tournament only: the US Open.
The argument for playing is straightforward enough. Arriving at a Grand Slam without a competitive match since April is close to unprecedented for a defending champion, and the first rounds in New York are best-of-five. The argument against is the wrist. Wrist injuries have a particular history in men’s tennis, and the cautionary names attached to them are significant ones. Rafael Nadal, who broke his own wrist twice, offered Alcaraz advice on the subject earlier this year that amounted to a warning against haste. A 250-level draw played six days before a major would test the joint under match conditions for the first time, with no margin if the test goes badly.
The ranking consequences run underneath all of it. Alcaraz is the defending US Open champion and has 2,000 points to protect there, on top of the 1,000 he has already surrendered by missing Cincinnati. US Open seeding is set from the rankings published Aug. 24, which is after Winston-Salem finishes and before the main draw begins on Aug. 30. Whatever he does or does not play in North Carolina, his seeding is already largely determined by the tournaments he has missed rather than the one he might add.
There is a version of this where he skips Winston-Salem, arrives in New York cold, and the draw does the rest. There is another where a small tournament in North Carolina becomes the most consequential week of his year. Neither has been chosen yet, and the people who know are not saying.
