5 min readUpdated: Sep 7, 2026 08:51 PM IST<\/p>\n
Seven of the men\u2019s top 10 seeds are gone from the US Open after eight days. Stretch that to the top 20, and it\u2019s 15.<\/p>\n
Djokovic started it. Medvedev kept it going. Most of the upsets share a strange helplessness, players who can\u2019t quite explain what happened to them.<\/p>\n
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Djokovic \u201cdespised every moment\u201d against Mariano Navone. Arthur Fils was up 5-2 in the second set on Stefanos Tsitsipas when his energy simply left him, no explanation, just gone, a lapse he called \u201calmost unprofessional.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex de Minaur had a favourable draw on paper and lost anyway, in the second round, to Botic van de Zandschulp. \u201cI can\u2019t really explain the reasoning of it, but it just felt like the more I tried, the more intensity, the more fired up I was getting, I just kept on making unforced errors,\u201d he said. The feel of the ball on the strings, gone, and he couldn\u2019t get it back.<\/p>\n
Felix Auger-Aliassime got dizzy against Karen Khachanov. Started seeing spots after a set and a half. Never recovered. \u201cI thought maybe it would pass, but it didn\u2019t,\u201d the No. 3 seed said. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt quite like that. I\u2019ve had cramps before. I\u2019ve felt tired towards the end of matches, but in a normal way. This was abnormal a little bit.\u201d He finished with 47 unforced errors.<\/p>\n
Taylor Fritz led Francisco Cerundolo by two sets and a break. Then it fell apart. \u201cI don\u2019t even know what to say. I don\u2019t really want to talk to anybody, see anybody,\u201d he said. \u201cI need to get out for a couple days and then get back to work. I don\u2019t know how I let that happen today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Packed calendar<\/p>\n
Flavio Cobolli, fifth seed, lost to Alexander Blockx and pointed to fatigue. \u201cI think my energy was a little bit lower than the other days,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel a little bit more tight and maybe more tired.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He\u2019s not alone. Carlos Alcaraz, back from a four-month wrist injury, has already been vocal about how packed the calendar has become. Jannik Sinner and Casper Ruud withdrew injured before the tournament even started. The shocks at Flushing Meadows may share a root cause: an expanded ATP schedule, and a modern game that already demands more of the body than most seasons allow it to give.<\/p>\n
Blockx, the man who beat Cobolli, put it plainly. \u201cThe season is long. I think all the guys who performed well in the preparation tournaments have it more difficult here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re all human. We\u2019re not robots. Every week is difficult. Especially at a Grand Slam where it gets even more physical. Mentally you have to really stay in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Open field<\/p>\n
Credit where it\u2019s due, the players pulling off these upsets are also grinding through a brutal tour, and their run through the first four rounds has cracked the men\u2019s draw wide open. The women\u2019s side tells the opposite story: 11 of the top 16 seeds are already through to the fourth round.<\/p>\n
Cerundolo, fresh off his comeback win over Fritz, called it a reflection of how tight the circuit has become. \u201cIt shows you how even the circuit is right now, how tight every match is, how difficult it is to win matches, because anything can happen right now,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of players are playing good. The level, it\u2019s super tight. It\u2019s open to everyone. Everyone can win.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Alcaraz and top seed Alexander Zverev remain the favourites, upsets or no upsets. Alcaraz is playing his first tournament back from injury and has looked confident through four rounds regardless. He and Sinner have shared 10 of the last 11 major titles between them, a stranglehold that\u2019s tormented everyone else on tour; Zverev is the one man who broke it, and he knows exactly how hard that was to do. He\u2019s admitted nerves once kept him from sleeping or eating properly before earlier Slams, and even after finally breaking through at Roland Garros and reaching the Wimbledon final, his best tennis still wasn\u2019t enough to unsettle a fully fit Sinner.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz looms again this time. If both he and Zverev play to their pedigree, New York could get the final it seems built for. Unless the upsets keep coming through the quarters and semis, and someone like Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe or Learner Tien takes the title instead.<\/p>\n
That might not be such a bad thing for the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5 min readUpdated: Sep 7, 2026 08:51 PM IST Seven of the men\u2019s top 10 seeds are gone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[256,139,2585,221,463,3829],"class_list":["post-67945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-taylor-fritz","tag-arthur-fils","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-stefanos-tsitsipas","tag-taylor-fritz","tag-us-open","tag-us-open-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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