The U.S. Open 2024 begins Monday in New York City, and the draws for the men’s and women’s singles are intriguing — and have thrown up some blockbuster first-round matches.
The Athletic’s tennis writers, Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare, analyze the match-ups, as well as offering some of their picks for the best matches of the opening days.
Defending champion Novak Djokovic evades his two biggest rivals, again
Novak Djokovic, the greatest tennis player of the modern era by the numbers, also has some of the greatest luck in tennis.
For a third consecutive Grand Slam, Djokovic has landed on the opposite side of the draw from Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, the two players who have proven themselves to be his equal or even a little better this year, especially in the Grand Slams.
Sinner won in Australia. Alcaraz won the French Open and Wimbledon. Djokovic arrives in New York without winning one of the last three Slams for the first time in 14 years.
And just like in Paris and London, he will not meet Sinner or Alcaraz until the final, if at all. If you’re 37 years old and coming off a few weeks’ rest, following an exhausting triumph at the Olympics, that’s very good fortune. Beating Sinner and Alcaraz back-to-back in a semi and a final would be a tall order for anyone these days — even Djokovic.
Naomi Osaka gets the opposite of good fortune
If fairy dust has been sprinkled over Djokovic all season at draw time, Naomi Osaka has been carrying around the opposite of that.
Caroline Garcia in the first round in Australia. Iga Swiatek in the second round in Paris. Wimbledon looked OK, until she ran into a hot Emma Navarro in the second round. Osaka, who is coming back from maternity leave after giving birth to her first child in July 2023, will face Jelena Ostapenko in the first round.
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Ostapenko, seeded 10th, is a fearless big hitter, who should like the feel of Osaka’s hard, flat ball. They’ve only played each other once — Osaka won, but that was eight years ago on clay, so it’s not much of a crystal ball. Osaka was, and perhaps remains, one of the world’s great hard-court players, a two-time winner of both the U.S. Open and Australian Open.
The plan has been for her comeback to catch fire in New York. Ostapenko should pose an immediate, big-time test.
Coco Gauff awaits her chance to reverse her slump
The best news about the draw for Coco Gauff is that she’s on the opposite side from Swiatek, who has beaten her 11 out of 12 times. They won’t face each other unless both players make the final.
Since the French Open, Gauff hasn’t shown the form that would qualify her thinking in those terms. She lost in the fourth round of Wimbledon and the third round at the Olympics. She lost her second match in Canada in the round of 16, and her first match in Cincinnati in the round of 32.
Gauff being Gauff, she likely isn’t looking at what’s going to happen in the second week. She is the queen of not looking ahead, instead focusing on her next match, not even the one after that.
She will face Varvara Gracheva of France in the first round. Gracheva is ranked 66th in the world. She’s in the same quarter of the draw as Elina Svitolina, Navarro, who knocked her out of Wimbledon, and Marta Kostyuk, and is in the same half as Aryna Sabalenka, who just won Cincinnati.
She has a long, long, road to Swiatek.
