US Open Day 2: Alcaraz, Sabalenka, and Osaka Face High Stakes
Carlos Alcaraz walks back into New York on Monday with a strange mix of familiarity and uncertainty. He owns the trophy, owns the court, but hasn’t hit a ball in anger for more than four months. The US Open defending champion returns from a right wrist injury with no gentle warm-up, no easing-in round. He gets Roman Safiullin, a man who has already proved he can hurt him.
The second day at Flushing Meadows is stacked. Alcaraz, Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Naomi Osaka, Linda Noskova – it reads like a second-week schedule crammed into a Monday. Three matches stand out, each with its own storyline, each with a different kind of pressure attached.
Safiullin v Alcaraz: Rust versus Risk
Head-to-head: 1-1
Alcaraz starts against Safiullin knowing exactly how dangerous this can get. The Russian is 29, hardened, and hits through the court with the kind of flat aggression that can pin anyone behind the baseline. He’s not coming to New York to admire the champion.
Safiullin’s recent résumé backs that up. At Wimbledon he took out Andrey Rublev and Joao Fonseca on his way to the fourth round, where he pushed Novak Djokovic to four sets. That run underlined what the locker room already knew: if you let him set his feet, he can bully you off the court.
He’s done it to Alcaraz before. At the ATP Paris Masters in 2023, Safiullin stunned then world number two Alcaraz, a result that briefly rattled the Spaniard’s aura of inevitability. Alcaraz hit back the following year at the Paris Olympics, but the scar tissue from that first loss lingers as a warning, not a memory.
This time the unknown is Alcaraz’s body. The right wrist that kept him out since April has been tested only in practice. He says the sessions have been brutal by design, that they’ve rebuilt his trust in the joint and in his game. He insists he’s ready to “go 100 percent”.
If that’s true, the equation shifts. The 21-year-old is chasing a rare kind of symmetry: Australian Open champion in January, US Open champion in September, bookending the season with majors while already having completed a career Grand Slam younger than any man before him. If there’s even a trace of rust, Safiullin has the tools to expose it.
Sabalenka v Osorio: A Champion Under Strain
Head-to-head: Sabalenka leads 2-0
Aryna Sabalenka arrives as a two-time defending champion in New York, but the feeling around her season has changed sharply. Back-to-back hard-court titles at Indian Wells and Miami in March put her on top of the world. Since then, the slide has been steady and very public.
The stakes are brutal. Sabalenka could become only the third woman in history – after Chris Evert and Serena Williams – to win three straight US Open titles. At the same time, her world number one ranking is under threat even if she pulls off that historic three-peat. That’s how thin the margins have become.
Her recent Grand Slam results tell the story. A quarter-final exit at Roland Garros. A fourth-round loss at Wimbledon. For a player who started the year by lifting the title in Brisbane and then reaching the Australian Open final, it feels like a season split in two.
On paper, Camila Osorio should not be the one to derail her. The Colombian sits at 59 in the world, and Sabalenka has beaten her twice – once on the grass of Wimbledon in 2021, once on the clay of Madrid in 2023. Two surfaces, same outcome, same gap in firepower.
But this is not a match about head-to-heads. It’s about whether Sabalenka can trust her game again when the ball flies faster, the stadium grows louder, and the ranking math creeps into the back of her mind. She says her confidence hasn’t cracked, that “tough challenges” only make her come back stronger. The next two weeks will reveal whether that’s defiance or prophecy.
Osaka v Zakharova: A Champion Returns to Her Court
First meeting
Naomi Osaka does not need reminding of what this place means. The US Open is where she announced herself in 2018, where she backed it up in 2020, and where two of her four Grand Slam titles live in the memory of the sport.
“I think I’ve proven myself here, so I can kind of bank on that and use that to have confidence,” she said recently. It’s not nostalgia. It’s a plan.
Her path back to contention has been long and complicated. Osaka has spoken openly about her mental health struggles, about the weight of expectation and the need to step away. She took 15 months out to focus on motherhood before returning in 2023, a decision that reshaped her life and her career.
The results are starting to follow the work. This month she reached the semi-finals in Washington on hard courts, then backed it up with a quarter-final run in Toronto. On grass, she produced her best-ever Wimbledon performance, going all the way to the quarter-finals and knocking out Sabalenka along the way. That win, in particular, signalled that she can still hit the heights when the moment demands it.
Now she’s back on hard courts, her favourite territory, under the lights of Flushing Meadows. Across the net stands Anastasia Zakharova, ranked 101 in the world and facing Osaka for the first time. The Russian has nothing to lose; Osaka has everything to reclaim.
Osaka will want a fast start, a clean performance that matches the memory of what she has been with the reality of what she is becoming again. If she finds that rhythm early, the draw will start to look very different for everyone else.
Day 2 in New York doesn’t ease anyone in. It asks blunt questions of champions coming back from injury, from crisis, from absence. The answers, starting Monday, will shape the rest of the fortnight.
