US Open 2024: Alcaraz's Comeback and Sabalenka's Challenge

Carlos Alcaraz walks back into New York on Monday with a strange mix of dominance and doubt hanging over him. He is the defending US Open champion, the man who completed a career Grand Slam before turning 22. He is also a player who has not struck a ball in a competitive match for more than four months.

The rust meets reality straight away.

Alcaraz back under the lights

Roman Safiullin is not the kind of opponent anyone would choose for a first match back from a right wrist injury. The 29-year-old Russian hits flat, hard, and deep, and he has already shown he can bully big names on hard courts and grass alike.

Their head-to-head is locked at 1-1. Safiullin stunned Alcaraz at the ATP Paris Masters in 2023, taking time away from the Spaniard and rushing him off the baseline. Alcaraz paid him back the following year on a bigger stage at the Paris Olympics, adjusting his patterns and using his variety to pull Safiullin out of his comfort zone.

This time, the stakes feel different. Alcaraz is trying to bookend his season with majors, having opened the year by winning the Australian Open to complete his set of Grand Slam titles. Now he returns to the scene where his all-court bravado and New York swagger have already made him a crowd favourite.

The question is the wrist.

Alcaraz insists the heavy training blocks have done their job, that the pain has gone and the confidence has returned. He says he is ready to “go 100 percent.” The court will deliver the only verdict that matters, but Safiullin has the tools to test every claim, especially from the back of the court where his weight of shot can pin anyone behind the baseline.

For a defending champion, this is no gentle warm-up. It is a stress test under the Arthur Ashe lights.

Sabalenka’s slide meets a familiar foe

On the women’s side, the numbers say Aryna Sabalenka should feel at home here. Two-time defending champion. World number one. A player who started 2024 by winning Brisbane and then reaching the Australian Open final, before sweeping the hard-court double at Indian Wells and Miami in March.

The mood tells a different story.

Since that blistering start, Sabalenka’s season has drifted. A quarter-final exit at Roland Garros. A fourth-round loss at Wimbledon. Enough dropped points and momentum that even a historic third straight US Open crown might not be enough to keep her at the top of the rankings.

She opens against Colombia’s Camila Osorio, ranked 59th and trailing 0-2 in their head-to-head. Those two meetings came on very different surfaces: the grass of Wimbledon in 2021 and the clay of Madrid in 2023. Sabalenka handled both with authority, her power punching clean holes through Osorio’s defenses.

Osorio will scrap, as she always does, but Sabalenka arrives with a point to prove. The Belarusian has been clear about her mindset through this dip, insisting her belief has not cracked. “Throw tough challenges at me, I will come back stronger,” she says.

New York can be unforgiving. It can also be the perfect place to roar back. For Sabalenka, this opener is less about the opponent and more about whether she can reimpose the ruthless version of herself that once made these hard courts feel like home.

Osaka returns to her favourite stage

Naomi Osaka does not need reminders of what Flushing Meadows means to her. The 2018 and 2020 champion has built some of the defining chapters of her career on these courts, in triumph and in turmoil.

Now she walks back in with a different kind of history behind her.

It has been five years since her last Grand Slam title, at the Australian Open. In that span she has spoken with rare honesty about her mental health, stepped away from the tour, and then taken 15 months out to focus on motherhood before returning in 2023.

The comeback has gathered pace this summer. Osaka reached the semi-finals at the Washington hard-court event and then backed it up with a run to the quarter-finals in Toronto. Her best-ever quarter-final finish at Wimbledon this year included an upset of Sabalenka, a result that reminded the locker room how dangerous she still is when her timing clicks.

Now she gets the surface she knows best.

Osaka opens against Russia’s Anastasia Zakharova, ranked 101st, in their first career meeting. On paper, it is the kind of match that should allow the Japanese star to settle quickly: a manageable opponent, a familiar stadium, a crowd that remembers what she has done here.

“I think I’ve proven myself here, so I can kind of bank on that and use that to have confidence,” Osaka said recently. That belief, layered on top of her recent results, gives this campaign a different feel from some of her tentative returns in the past.

As Day 2 of the US Open unfolds, the storylines are clear. A defending men’s champion testing a healed wrist. A world number one trying to halt a slide before it gathers speed. A two-time champion chasing a new chapter on her most successful stage.

New York has a habit of deciding who is truly back and who is only saying it.