dp“I’m coming back. Here we go.”
With those six words, Carlos Alcaraz bent the tennis universe back his way Thursday, as he heralded his return to the sport after a four-month absence because of a wrist injury.
Alcaraz, the seven-time Grand Slam champion who has been out since April, said he will return at the U.S. Open in a collaboration post with soccer transfer figure Fabrizio Romano, and even saw fit to throw in the Italian’s catchphrase: “Here we go.”
The 23-year-old Spaniard is defending champion in New York. Assuming his wrist stays healthy during the next week, he will look to renew his rivalry with world No. 1 Jannik Sinner there — but Sinner is yet to confirm his participation after withdrawing from this week’s Cincinnati Open with a right knee injury.
Alcaraz is also yet to formally confirm if his comeback will include the singles event. The main draws get underway Aug. 30, but Alcaraz may be on court sooner than that. The U.S. Open still has three wild cards to hand out for its mixed doubles tournament, which runs Aug. 24 through Aug. 26, including the qualifying event. The tournament will require a decision from Alcaraz on the mixed event in the next day or so, but his singles participation does not have to be set in stone until the draw on Aug. 27.
Alcaraz could pair with Serena Williams, a megastar and the greatest player of the modern era, to form a tantalizing duo in the mixed event. It could also serve as a useful test run to determine whether Alcaraz’s wrist has healed enough for the rigor of five-set tennis — an imperfect indication, but a better one than going in cold.
Grand Slam tennis packs its stiffest test, with the men having to play best-of-five sets instead of the best-of-three format that they play during regular tour events. Coming back for a Grand Slam without playing a warm-up event is the ultimate jump into the fire
Alcaraz has been managing tenosynovitis, an injury in which fluid accumulates in the sheath that protects a key tendon in the wrist. The injury has kept him out of two Grand Slams this year, with the Spaniard and his team taking a cautious approach to managing the kind of ailment that tennis players fear most. Alcaraz pulled out of the French Open a full month before it started, and withdrew from Wimbledon nearly six weeks out.
His latest withdrawal, from Cincinnati, was much closer to the start of the event, a sign that his comeback was nearing. Now it is in full view. As Alcaraz himself would say, it appears, here we go.
This move is in keeping with Alcaraz, the sport’s biggest star other than Novak Djokovic, the greatest men’s player of all-time and, even at 39, a true rival up until very recently. Dramatic; perhaps risky; and also filled with wild possibility — that Alcaraz might prove great enough to get up from his couch and walk into the gym and then the practice court, before rocking up to one the sport’s biggest tournaments and walking away with the trophy.
“Tennis needs Carlos,” Sinner said at Wimbledon.
Alcaraz’s absence has been an especially acute blow to the men’s game, which has banked on him and Sinner to provide another one of the sport’s classic generational rivalries over the next decades. No one else won a Grand Slam title from the start of 2024 through this year’s Australian Open.
No one lights up a stadium as Alcaraz has the past three seasons with his dynamic, all-court game, his love of the spotlight, and his can-you-top-this flair for the improvisational. He does not win every match or every title, but his play elicits gasps from the crowds unlike anything anyone else does on the tennis court.
Those that are waiting for him in New York will hope to see all of that. How soon? Let’s see.
