{"id":742419,"date":"2026-08-19T01:02:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T01:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/742419\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T01:02:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T01:02:18","slug":"us-open-2026-venus-williams-46-given-singles-wildcard-along-with-sloane-stephens-and-stan-wawrinka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/742419\/","title":{"rendered":"US Open 2026: Venus Williams, 46, given singles wildcard along with Sloane Stephens and Stan Wawrinka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venus has fared better in doubles in recent years, reaching the quarter-finals in New York last year alongside Canada’s Leylah Fernandez.<\/p>\n

She has not won a singles match at a Grand Slam since Wimbledon in 2021, where she reached the second round.<\/p>\n

However, the Williams sisters still draw huge crowds together or separately, with stands packed out in Cincinnati for their recent return.<\/p>\n

Serena, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, played what was expected to be the last tournament of her career in New York in 2022.<\/p>\n

However, she made her return first in doubles at Queen’s in June before being given the final Wimbledon women’s singles wildcard.<\/p>\n

Venus won her first US Open singles title in 2000, two months after earning her maiden major at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n

She beat Serena in the final a year later to defend her title – the first of nine major showpieces the sister would contest.<\/p>\n

Venus became the oldest US Open singles player in 44 years when she played at the tournament last year.<\/p>\n

She lost in three sets to ninth seed Karolina Muchova and gave an emotional news conference afterwards, saying it was “nice to be free”.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2011, Williams was diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome, an incurable autoimmune disease with symptoms including pain, numbness and fatigue.<\/p>\n

She spoke in 2025 about the impact of painful fibroids – abnormal growths that develop in the uterus – on her daily life.<\/p>\n

In the men’s draw, France’s Gael Monfils has been awarded a wildcard in the final Grand Slam of his career.<\/p>\n

There is also one remaining wildcard for the men’s singles, which could go to 2016 champion Stan Wawrinka.<\/p>\n

The Swiss is also calling time on his career at the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venus has fared better in doubles in recent years, reaching the quarter-finals in New York last year alongside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-742419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}