Former champions Naomi Osaka, Bianca Andreescu and Stan Wawrinka have received singles main draw wild cards into the US Open, the United States Tennis Association said Wednesday.
Japan’s Osaka, who counts the 2018 and 2020 US Opens among her four Grand Slam titles, returned to competition in January after the birth of her daughter and has advanced to the third round or better at four WTA 1000 events this season.
Canada’s Andreescu, the 2019 US Open champion, returned to action this year after missing nine months due to a back injury and reached the French Open third round in her first event back.
For Swiss Wawrinka, who won the most recent of his three Grand Slam titles at the 2016 US Open, the wild card allows him to make his 72nd main draw appearance in one of the game’s four blue-riband events, which puts him fifth on the all-time list.
Austrian Dominic Thiem, the 2020 US Open champion who announced this year that he will retire following the 2024 season due to a wrist injury, was also given a wild card.
The US Open is Aug. 26-Sept. 8 in New York.
Naomi Osaka said Tuesday she still does not feel like herself on the court eight months into her comeback season following a maternity break, with the four-time Grand Slam champion puzzled at her lack of power and accuracy.
The 26-year-old Japanese player was beaten by Ashlyn Krueger in the second round of qualifying for the Cincinnati Open on Monday, the latest setback in a patchy run of form heading into the final Grand Slam of the year at the US Open from Aug. 26 to Sept. 8.
Osaka returned to action in January after a 15-month break during which she gave birth to her daughter. Now ranked 90th in the world, her best results have been runs to the quarterfinals at Doha and ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
Osaka’s next event will be at Flushing Meadows, where she triumphed in 2018 and 2020, but she said she did not understand why everything about her game felt “almost brand new again.”
