Djokovic third seed in Cincinnati, Zverev waits in semifinal
Novak Djokovic is the third seed at the Cincinnati Masters and gets a bye in the first round. Alexander Zverev, if Djokovic gets that far, only awaits in the semifinal, behind Mensik and de Minaur.
The line next to Novak Djokovic’s name in the first round stayed empty. No opponent, no start time, no reason to step onto a court in Ohio before the tournament even reaches its second day. That is the only privilege the draw gave him, and it is the kind that comes with status.
Everything else on that sheet looks like work.
Djokovic was seeded third in Cincinnati, which means he skips the first round. In the second, he faces the winner between Thiago Agustin Tirante and Coinski, and that is where the awkward part starts. The Argentine beat Taylor Fritz and Alexei Popyrin at this summer’s Canadian Masters before losing himself, so this is not a name to glance past.
How tough is Djokovic’s road to the final?
Tough enough that no match can be played at half speed. In the third round, he could meet Matteo Arnaldi, a semifinalist at this year’s Roland Garros, or Jack Draper. One is a player who grew up watching Novak, the other has a lefty serve that can break a match’s rhythm on a hard court before it ever settles.
Jakub Mensik is projected in the round of 16, and the quarterfinal brings one of three names: Alex de Minaur, Jiri Lehecka or Arthur Fils. Only after all of that does Alexander Zverev show up, and even then only in the semifinal.
Anyone in Cincinnati who expected the German to be Novak’s first real obstacle was off by three rounds.
The top half of the draw, and what it means
Djokovic ended up in the top half. Felix Auger-Aliassime is in the bottom half, making the Canadian one of the possible final opponents, alongside Daniil Medvedev, Joao Fonseca and Ben Shelton.
The math shifts further because Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are both missing from the tournament. The two players who have split almost everything decided on hard courts over the past two seasons are out of this draw, and that is the only number working in Novak’s favor: two fewer names on the list of people who can stop him before the final week.
This is his first appearance in Ohio since 2023. He beat Alcaraz in that year’s final, in a match still cited whenever someone looks for proof of what this tournament can pull out of a player.
Kecmanovic, Medjedovic and Lajovic
Among the other Serbian players, Miomir Kecmanovic opens against Argentina’s Hugo Carabelli. Hamad Medjedovic starts against a qualifier and could run into Medvedev as early as the second round. Dusan Lajovic is trying to work his way through qualifying and is not yet in the main draw.
Three players in the Masters main draw, plus one knocking on the door. For an August measured entirely against New York, that is not a small number.
What’s next
Cincinnati is Djokovic’s only tune-up before the US Open, the season’s last Grand Slam, which starts August 30. There is no other tournament in between, no room to search for form along the way.
Which is why this draw is not just a list of names. It is the one run of matches where Novak can see where his serve stands, how long he lasts into a third set, and whether his body is ready for two weeks in New York. The match against Tirante or Coinski, in that sense, matters more than it looks on paper.
What bothers me here is one thing: the schedule bunches up exactly where Novak pays the highest price, in the middle rounds. Mensik followed by de Minaur with two days between them is not a passage, it is a test for his legs. If he gets through it, he reaches the semifinal with matches already in his legs, and only then does the talk about Zverev start to matter.
His first match comes in the second round.
