What Sabalenka Leaves: Since winning the Australian at the start of the year, she has been plagued by injuries and has had few victories, save for an absolutely dominant performance during that warm-up in Cincinnati. She couldn’t have peaked at a better time and, barring the mental and emotional setbacks or wildcards that are always a possibility for Sabalenka, would appear to be the favorite to take home her first Open title and avenge her defeat to Gauff last year.

Naomi Osaka

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Regardless of who wins, there are a number of first-round matches that are definitely worth watching. Look out for Jelena Ostapenko, the mistress of dark strategies and idiosyncratic games, against a Naomi Osaka who still seems to be struggling to find her form after her return to the tour, or the cheerful Jasmine Paolini against Bianca Andreescu, also returning to the tour after a devastating ankle injury last year.

As for the men, it’s become a bit of a dilemma. After much lamentation about the fact that tennis has been dominated almost exclusively by the so-called Big Three (Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal) for literally decades, we now find ourselves with… another version of the Big Three (although this episode hasn’t earned the capital letters of the first one). Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and, yes, Djokovic – the reigning Open champion – have largely secured the major titles of the past few seasons and will probably continue to do so for a while: although they’ve all had injuries (and in Djokovic’s case surgery), they all seem healthy now. So who’s going to win the Open?

Novak Djokovic

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Each player has a micro-backstory to the moment. For Djokovic, it’s an Olympic triumph: he’s finally won that gold medal, the one prize in tennis that had eluded him up until that point. Since then, though, he’s taken some time off and stayed away from warm-up tournaments, so he’s a bit of a wildcard in terms of his Open positioning. Alcaraz’s story is one of mostly epic dominance, save for an embarrassing loss to Gael Monfils in Cincinnati that seemed to really throw him off. All eyes will be on him to see how he navigates New York, both physically and emotionally.