New York, Aug 17 : Seven-time major champion Venus Williams and 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin lead the list of the eight women who have been awarded wild cards to the 2022 US Open women’s singles main draw, the tournament’s organisers announced on Wednesday. Venus as well as Sofia are alongside their fellow Americans CoCo Vandeweghe Elizabeth Mandlik, Peyton Stearns and Eleana Yu as well as the Australia’s Jaimee Fourlis and France’s Harmony Tan as part of reciprocal wild card agreements with Tennis Australia and the French tennis federation.
The 42-year-old Williams will make her 23rd US Open main draw appearance.The 2001 and 2000 US Open singles champion missed the tournament last year with injuries and was out for nearly a year prior to getting back to playing mixed doubles in Wimbledon in June.
She’s played a variety of singles events this summer, including the Citi Open in Washington, DC and the National Bank Open in Toronto as well as the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati.
On the other side, Kenin, the most recent American woman to win the Grand Slam singles title with her victory in the 2020 Australian Open, is also in the process of recovering from an injury.
The 23-year-old was out for four months of the year with an ankle injury.She returned to action during the Citi Open.
Meanwhile, the 2018 US Open doubles champion Vandeweghe recently won her first win in the past six years with the sweep of the doubles and singles competitions of the WTA 125 Series event in Concord, Mass, the WTA’s version of ATP Challenger tournaments.
The former world number.9 has been battling with injuries and health issues for the majority of the past four years, however her victory in Concord brought her up by nearly 70 places in the WTA singles rankings this week, to No.125.
The likes of Mandlik, Stearns and Yu will all make their Grand Slam main-draw debuts after winning wild cards in the tournament.
Mandlik was the winner of the US Open Wild Card Challenge which awards the American male and female who receives the most points on summer hard-court with an US Open wild card while Stearns of Mason, Ohio, won the 2022 NCAA singles titles to conclude her second season at the University of Texas.
The 17-year-old Yu is also from Ohio is the USTA Girls 18s champion at the national level.
The 2022 US Open will be played between August 29 and September 11 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, New York.
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