Gill Gross’s pick to win the 2026 US Open is not Carlos Alcaraz. It is 19-year-old Rafael Jodar, and the tennis analyst has the fellow Spaniard beating the defending champion in a five-set final.
Gross laid out the reasoning in analysis carried by tennis365. He does not doubt that Alcaraz can go deep in New York, and has him reaching the final. The pick against him for the trophy is really a pick about how Alcaraz responds when a match starts to slip.
“I think there’s a real threat that he plays a bad match and when he does I still think he’s not quite as good as prime Nadal or Djokovic at responding to a C-level for Carlos by his standards,” Gross said.
“Alcaraz plays a very ambitious style, high degree of difficulty, things have to be clicking.”
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The four-and-a-half-month layoff is the other reason Gross is holding back.
“I can’t go all the way to picking him to win the US Open having not played a tournament in four and a half months.”
The wrist that took his summer
Alcaraz withdrew from the Barcelona Open in mid-April with what was diagnosed as tenosynovitis in his right wrist, an inflammation of the tissue around the tendons. It cost him the French Open and Wimbledon, and left him roughly 139 days without a competitive singles match, according to Yahoo Sports, before he stepped on court at Flushing Meadows without a warm-up event.
His comeback on Monday was a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 win over Roman Safiullin. Alcaraz, seeded second and ranked third in the world, said his body cooperated.
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“I don’t know how it looked from outside, but from inside, my feeling was that I was hitting normal,” he told reporters. “I was playing pretty normal, playing my style, and yeah, the arm, the wrist, everything felt great.”
“I couldn’t have decided to come back in a better tournament than in the US Open here in New York.”
“I missed it. I missed the crowd, the energy. I missed competition. I missed everything.”
Djokovic and Sinner already gone
The prime-Djokovic-and-Nadal benchmark Gross reached for is missing its principals at this US Open. World No. 1 Jannik Sinner withdrew before the tournament with a right knee injury. Novak Djokovic, seeded fourth, was beaten in five sets in his opening match by Argentina’s Mariano Navone, his first ever first-round defeat at the US Open.
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Alexander Zverev took the No. 1 seeding in Sinner’s absence. Alcaraz’s second-round match is on Wednesday against Portugal’s Jaime Faria, the world No. 72.
Gross left himself an exit ramp on the Jodar pick. If Alcaraz reaches the final, he said, the call will change.
“If Alcaraz does make the final, I am probably going to change my pick.”
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