US Open Tennis Women’s Wildcards • Venus Williams, CoCo Vandeweghe, Caty Mc Nally and More

By Witherspoon
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Updated: August 18, 2021

Venus Williams leads the list of US Open women’s wild card recipients. Photo credit: EPA

Venus Williams will return to the US Open this month.

The two-time US Open champion leads a list of wild cards into the 2021 US Open main draw, which begins on August 30th.

Former world No. 9 CoCo Vandeweghe and rising Americans Caty McNally, Hailey Baptiste and Katie Volynets received main draw wild cards into the 2021 US Open, alongside NCAA singles champion Emma Navarro and USTA Girls’ 18s national champion Ashlyn Krueger.

Australian Storm Sanders will also receive a main draw wild card as part of a reciprocal agreement.

The 2021 US Open will be played August 30-September 12 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y.

Williams, 41, is a former world No. 1 currently ranked No. 112. She’s a five-time Wimbledon and two-time US Open champion and has reached the semifinals or better in New York nine times. She ranks sixth all-time in match wins in the Open Era and her 49 WTA singles titles rank second only behind her sister Serena among active players on tour.

Vandeweghe, 29, of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., is a former world No. 9 currently ranked No. 160. She’s won two WTA singles titles and in 2017 reached the semifinals of both the Australian and US Opens and led the U.S. to the Billie Jean King Cup title.

McNally, 19, of Cincinnati, is currently ranked No. 136. She’s been ranked as high as No. 105 on tour, No. 6 among juniors and reached the third round of the 2020 US Open. She’s also won four WTA doubles titles. Baptiste, 19, of Washington, D.C., is currently ranked No. 181. A former junior standout who won three 25-level ITF World Tennis Tour titles in 2019, she qualified and reached the second round at the French Open and won her first career WTA doubles title this year.

Volynets, 19, of Walnut Creek, Calif., is ranked No. 189. She earned a wild card into the 2019 US Open as the USTA Girls’ 18s national champion, where she played eventual-champion Bianca Andreescu in the first round. Volynets won her first pro singles title this year, at the 100-level USTA Pro Circuit event in Bonita Springs, Fla., and qualified at Wimbledon.

Navarro, 20, of Charleston, S.C., is currently ranked No. 329. She won the NCAA singles title in May as a freshman at the University of Virginia after going 25-1 in collegiate singles, a program record for single-season win percentage. She earned a qualifying wild card into the 2019 US Open as the USTA Girls’ 18s finalist.

Krueger, 17, of Highland Village, Texas, is currently ranked No. 647 and won the 2021 USTA Girls’ 18s national championship. She’s been ranked as high as No. 25 in the world among juniors and won the prestigious Orange Bowl 16s and 18s singles titles in consecutive years (2019-20), the first player since Andreescu to do so in 2014-15.

Sanders, 27, from Rockhampton, Australia, is currently ranked No. 139 and has won two WTA doubles titles.

The USTA also announced the women receiving wild cards into the US Open Qualifying tournament, held August 24-27 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center: Reese Brantmeier (16, Whitewater, Wisc.), this year’s USTA Girls’ 18s runner-up; Katrina Scott (17, Woodland Hills, Calif.), who reached the second round of the 2020 US Open; Robin Montgomery (16, Washington, D.C.), a 2019 Junior Billie Jean King Cup champion alongside Scott; Clervie Ngounoue (15, Washington, D.C.), a Top 50 world-ranked junior; Elvina Kalieva (18, Staten Island, N.Y.), a former world junior No. 15; Elli Mandlik (20, Boca Raton, Fla.), the daughter of former US Open champion Hana Mandlikova who won her third and fourth career 15-level pro singles titles in July; Hanna Chang (23, Fontana, Calif.), who has won four career pro singles titles; Vicky Duval (25, Miami), a former world No. 87 who reached the second round of the 2013 US Open; and Peyton Stearns (19, Mason, Ohio), the Most Outstanding Player at the 2021 NCAA team championship.