Sinner withdraws from Cincinnati Open with knee injury before US Open

Jannik Sinner withdrew from the Cincinnati Open because of a right knee injury, pulling the ATP world No. 1 out of a Masters 1000 event that is one of the last major hard-court tests before the US Open begins in New York on Aug. 30. The Cincinnati main draw was scheduled to open on Aug. 13 and run through Aug. 23, and Sinner’s absence now removes a marquee name from that stretch of the summer calendar.

The injury matters because Sinner’s game is built on movement, balance and repeated changes of direction, all of which are stressed in back-to-back matches on hard courts. He said he had been working with his medical team and was focusing on getting ready for the US Open, while BBC reported that he still expected to be fit later in the month. That leaves him only a narrow window to recover, restore match sharpness and prove his knee can handle the demands of a Grand Slam in New York.

His decision also reshapes the bracket around him. Carlos Alcaraz withdrew from Cincinnati as well, leaving the tournament without two of its biggest stars and opening the door for the rest of the field to take advantage of a thinner draw. If Sinner arrives at Flushing Meadows less than fully sharp, the players most likely to benefit are the men chasing a path through the top half of the draw, including Novak Djokovic and other established hard-court threats.

Sinner enters the US Open as the reigning Wimbledon champion and the owner of five Grand Slam singles titles after beating Alexander Zverev in July. That makes the timing of the knee problem especially delicate, because Cincinnati and Montreal were supposed to provide the kind of high-level hard-court reps that sharpen a No. 1 seed before New York. He had already withdrawn from the Montreal Open a week earlier with the same issue, underscoring that the priority now is protecting the bigger target.

The next few days will determine whether Sinner can turn this into a brief interruption or whether the injury changes the shape of the season’s final major. For Cincinnati, it is already a significant loss. For New York, it is the first real sign that the men’s field may arrive with its top seed under a cloud.