US Open 2024 live updates: Men’s final with USA’s Taylor Fritz against Jannik Sinner

For more than a year now, his name has been on the tongues of all the truly in-the-know tennis folks. Tennis has snobs who for months have wanted to talk about little other than an American teenager, trained in Spain, named Darwin Blanch. Yeah, that Darwin Blanch.

He’s the boy that Carlos Alcaraz sometimes hits with when they are both training in Alicante. He’s the one for whom Rick Macci, the guy who helped mold the Williams sisters, Jennifer Capriati and Andy Roddick, reserves the loftiest language.

“That left hand, it’s like there was magic in a bottle,” Macci said of Blanch one morning earlier this year at his training center in Boca Raton, Florida. “He doesn’t hope to be great. He expects to be great… The next great American talent,” Macci said.

At the 2024 U.S. Open however, Blanch is nowhere to be found.

This article is part of The Next Generation series. As the greats become the past and Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek handle the present, The Athletic explores the next generation: the rising stars tasked with securing tennis’ future.