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The 2022 tennis season will hit its crescendo over the next fortnight at the US Open, held annually at Arthur Ashe Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens.
And for the first time in a long time, the Men’s Draw seems wide open, partially due to the fact that Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Sascha Zverev won’t play, but also because none of the favorites come into Queens in top form.
Daniil Medvedev, the defending champion, is the betting favorite at +220, but he is coming off a first-round loss to Nick Kyrgios in Montreal and a semi-final defeat at the hands of Stefanos Tsitsipas in Cincinnati. Medvedev did win on a hard court in Los Cabos prior to traveling to Canada, but he had a relatively easy draw in that tournament and the losses to Kyrgios and Tsitsipas do show that perhaps the gap between the favorite and the chasing pack is not all that wide.
Second-choice Rafa Nadal (+380) also has legitimate questions to answer after he lost his Round 1 match in Cincinnati to eventual champion Borna Coric as a -600 favorite. That was Nadal’s first match since tearing his abdomen on June 27, so who knows where his game is at right now.
Nadal’s protege, Carlos Alcaraz, is next on the board at +550 and looks like he’s well on his way to becoming the best player in the world, but he’s only 19 and has not made it to a semifinal in a Grand Slam yet. Alcaraz is only 2-2 during the North American hard-court season and is in a relatively deep quarter that also features Hubert Hurkacz (+3600), Jannik Sinner (+1700), Borna Coric (+4200) and Marin Cilic (+5000).
