Carlos Alcaraz, the two-time Wimbledon champion, will miss this year’s tournament as he continues his recovery from a right wrist injury.Alcaraz will also miss Queen’s, the prestigious warm-up event held in London, after ruling himself out of the entire grass-court swing. He is a two-time champion there, too, last winning it in 2025.“My recovery is going well and I feel much better, but unfortunately I’m still not ready to be able to play, and that’s why I have to withdraw from the grass-court swing at Queen’s and Wimbledon,” Alcaraz, 23, wrote in a statement on social media.“They are two really special tournaments for me and I’ll miss them a lot. We keep working to return as soon as possible!”Alcaraz last year finished runner-up at the third Grand Slam on the tennis calendar, losing to his nearest rival, Jannik Sinner, in the final. Alcaraz and Sinner have shared the past nine Grand Slam titles in men’s singles, passing the world No. 1 ranking back and forth. But Alcaraz’s ongoing absence, which started when he injured his right wrist during April’s Barcelona Open, has offered Sinner a window to establish a period of total dominance on the ATP Tour.Alcaraz then withdrew from this year’s editions of the three biggest clay-court tournaments in the sport: the Madrid Open, which he has won once, the Italian Open, which he has won once, and the French Open, which he has won twice. Sinner won the first two and is the overwhelming favorite to win the third, which starts May 24 in Paris.Alcaraz, who already has seven Grand Slam titles, has been unequivocal about his reluctance to rush his comeback. Speaking at the Laureus Awards in Madrid last month before announcing his withdrawal from the Madrid Open, he said in Spanish: “I have a very long career ahead of me, with many years still to come. Forcing things at this Roland Garros could really harm me for future tournaments.”He has now chosen not to force things on his other favorite surface. This year’s Wimbledon starts June 29.‘The news that pretty much everyone in tennis was dreading’Analysis from senior tennis writer Charlie EccleshareThis was the news that pretty much everyone in tennis was dreading.No player is bigger than the sport, but Alcaraz is so fundamental to the health of the ATP Tour that Tuesday’s Wimbledon withdrawal is a shattering blow.A wrist injury is the one that every tennis player dreads, and so the hope is that Alcaraz is simply being sensible and not rushing his comeback. But inevitably there will be widespread concern about when he will be able to return, and how quickly he’ll be able to get back to the level that made him a seven-time Grand Slam champion before his 23rd birthday.With Alcaraz gone, the men’s game risks turning into a procession for Jannik Sinner. He and Alcaraz are so far ahead of everyone else that on current form it’s hard to see how anyone can push Sinner, the 24-year-old world No. 1. He is on a 29-match winning streak, last lost a match in February, and has won his past five events.Sinner has spoken about how much tennis misses Alcaraz, and the Spaniard’s game style is a magnet for casual fans. Anyone with even a passing interest in the sport will lament his absence.Tennis can only hope that, like his compatriot Rafael Nadal when he was a similar age, Alcaraz is able to recover from an injury that if not treated properly could derail what is already a Hall of Fame career, and could become an all-time one.Is that Novak Djokovic’s music?Analysis from senior tennis writer Matthew FuttermanNovak Djokovic is the last player who wants to see a rival suffer an injury.He’s managed his share of ailments and injuries across over two decades. An elbow injury in 2017 put his career in jeopardy. A knee ligament tear in 2024, picked up during a fourth-round match at the French Open which he still managed to win, cost him the chance to defend his title.The 38-year-old who has long spoken of his admiration for Alcaraz as a player and a person, would still be forgiven for reacting to his great rival missing Wimbledon with interest.Djokovic, who turns 39 Friday, remains the purest men’s grass-court player on the planet, Alcaraz apart, and the two-time champion’s absence from the All England Lawn Tennis Club this summer presents a golden opportunity for the Serb to achieve yet another tennis milestone.His past three losses at Wimbledon have come to Alcaraz, in the 2023 and 2024 final, and to world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, in last year’s semifinal. The 2023 final went to five sets. The 2024 one was a beatdown, but Djokovic was there just seven weeks after surgery on that knee ligament tear. In 2025, he had to play Sinner on an injured hip after falling in the final moments of his quarterfinal win over Flavio Cobolli.Novak Djokovic remains a master of grass-court tennis even as he approaches 39 years of age. (Julian Finney / Getty Images)“Honestly, wasn’t really a pleasant feeling on the court,” he said after last year’s loss to Sinner.“Yeah, I don’t want to talk, in details, about my injury and just whine about not managing to play my best. I want to congratulate Jannik for another great performance. That’s it. He’s in the finals. He was too strong. I do feel, yeah, disappointed that I just wasn’t able to move as well as I thought or hoped that I would.”It’s possible that Sinner is simply too good right now, especially given how well he moves on the organic surfaces. But other than a post-Olympic-gold loss to Alexei Popyrin at the U.S. Open in 2024, Djokovic, when healthy enough to compete, has only lost to Sinner and Alcaraz at Grand Slams since the start of that year.Beating them both in one seems basically impossible. But now Alcaraz is out of another one, just as he is out of this month’s French Open.Djokovic beat Sinner on his best surface, in five sets, at January’s Australian Open. He has won Wimbledon seven times. No one else in the field has been able to touch him on grass in forever.That adds up to a pretty golden opportunity for someone who understands how to play tennis on a lawn better than anyone.