NEW YORK \u2014 Two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka and\u00a0Wimbledon winner Jannik Sinner\u00a0lead the fields for the U.S. Open that begins next month.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Tennis Association announced the direct entry lists Tuesday for the final Grand Slam tournament of the season. Based on the July 20 rankings on the WTA and ATP Tours, the cutoff was No. 102 for the women and No. 101 for the men.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka tops the women’s rankings and will arrive in Flushing Meadows trying to become the\u00a0first woman to win three straight U.S. Open titles\u00a0since\u00a0Serena Williams\u00a0from 2012-14.<\/p>\n
Sinner will be trying to regain the title that Carlos Alcaraz took from the 2024 champion when they\u00a0met in last year’s final. The top-ranked Italian is coming off his fifth major championship, when he beat French Open champion Alexander Zverev in the Wimbledon final.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz, who has missed the last two majors because of a wrist injury but hopes to return during the North American hard-court swing, is ranked No. 3 and entered in the field.<\/p>\n
The U.S. led the way with 14 men and 14 women earning direct entry. No. 102 Anastasia Zakharova was the last woman and Filip Misolic, who used a protected ranking at No. 101, rounded out the men’s list.<\/p>\n
Misolic was one of eight players (five women, three men) to use a special or protected ranking.<\/p>\n
The remainder of the 128-player fields will be filled through wild cards given by the USTA \u2014 Williams would be expected to get one if healthy and planning to play after the 44-year-old returned to tennis but\u00a0injured her knee in a first-round loss\u00a0at Wimbledon \u2014 and qualifying tournaments the week before the main draw begins on Sunday, Aug. 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka and\u00a0Wimbledon winner Jannik Sinner\u00a0lead the fields for the U.S. Open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-817433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}