Two names sit above the field at Flushing Meadows. The boards just below them are where the tournament gets interesting.
The 2026 US Open main draw begins on Sunday, August 30 at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens and runs through September 13. The last major of the season arrives with two clear favorites, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, and a chasing pack deep enough to make the first week genuinely unpredictable.
The men’s top five starts with Sinner, priced around -175. He has gone 55-5 on hard courts over the past year and swept the biggest hardcourt Masters events, so the market treats him as the man to beat. Carlos Alcaraz, the defending champion, is the second choice near +175 as he shakes off a wrist injury that cost him nearly four months. Behind the pair sit Alexander Zverev at roughly +900 and Novak Djokovic around +1100, with the American duo of Ben Shelton and Taylor Fritz next on the board near +2000.
The women’s five is tighter after the top line. Sabalenka is the standout at about +225 as she chases a third straight US Open title, then Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina cluster from roughly +550 to +800. Naomi Osaka and Mirra Andreeva sit a step further back, the kind of prices that turn one hot fortnight into a payout.
The sportsbook numbers are only half the picture this year. On the regulated prediction markets, where users trade contracts priced between one and 99 cents that read as implied probabilities, the same field is priced in real time: Polymarket makes Sabalenka a clear favorite near 28.5 cents, with Rybakina, Gauff and Swiatek bunched around nine cents apiece. Anyone comparing those implied probabilities across the major prediction market brands can see how closely the exchange prices track the sportsbook boards. Across the sport, Sinner remains the overwhelming men’s pick, with Sabalenka on top of the women’s side, and both sets of numbers agree on it.
“Sabalenka at around +225 for a third straight in New York is as short as a women’s favorite has been here in a while, and the exchanges back it, pricing her near 29 cents while the chasers sit around nine,” one market watcher said. “That gap says the value is in the second tier, not the top of the board.”
The dark horses are where the season could turn. The American men have their best chance at ending a long Slam drought, with Fritz arriving off the Washington title as the top-ranked American and Shelton defending his Montreal crown in an all-American final this week. On the women’s side Naomi Osaka has rediscovered form as a former champion, teenager Mirra Andreeva keeps climbing, and Amanda Anisimova will have a home crowd behind her.
“Neither Fritz nor Shelton is the favorite, but at around +2000 they are exactly the outsiders casual money keeps backing at a home Slam,” one tennis analyst said. “A deep run from either would be the story of the tournament, and the markets would reprice them round by round if it happened.”
The picks that fill those boards are the same ones fans argue over all summer. Our early US Open preview is already breaking down who is looking good for Flushing Meadows, from the top seeds to the Americans in the draw. The draw opens August 30, and the favorites will not have it all their own way.
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