The stars are aligning for the year's final Grand Slam event: The 2024 US Open main-draw entry lists have been revealed, and tennis' biggest names will take to the sport's grandest stage when the spotlight falls upon the Flushing fortnight.
World No. 1s Jannik Sinner, January's Australian Open champion, and Iga Swiatek, who won her third straight Roland Garros title in June, lead the men's and women's initial entry lists, and they are joined at the top by world No. 2s and defending champions Novak Djokovic and Coco Gauff. Sinner played his first Grand Slam tournament as the world's top player at Wimbledon, having ascended to the top spot on June 10, while Swiatek tops the field in New York for the third year running since first ascending to the No. 1 ranking in the spring of 2022.
Click to view the full initial entry lists: Men's Singles | Women's Singles | Women's Qualifying | Men's Qualifying
All three of the year's other Grand Slam champions are also on the list, including 2022 US Open champion Carlos Alcaraz, who after winning Roland Garros and Wimbledon is seeking to be the first man since Rafael Nadal in 2010 to win Paris, London and New York in the same year; reigning Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka, the 2023 US Open finalist who missed Wimbledon due to injury; and recently-crowned Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova, who returned to the Top 10 in this week's WTA rankings that determined the entry lists.
Notably, four-time US Open champion Nadal has also entered the field with a protected ranking of No. 9. The 22-time major champion and former world No. 1 has played the US Open just once, in 2022, since winning his fourth Queens crown in 2019, and is one of 14 players using a protected ranking to earn main-draw entry. Also entered via a protected ranking are 2020 semifinalist Pablo Carreno Busta and quarterfinalist Denis Shapovalov, 2022 quarterfinalist Ajla Tomljanovic, 2020 quarterfinalist Shelby Rogers, and 2019 quarterfinalist Wang Qiang, as well as American Reilly Opelka, who is set to play his first Grand Slam tournament since 2022 after a long spell with injuries.
Update (8/7/24): Nadal announced his withdrawal from the 2024 US Open, saying in part: "I don’t think I would be able to give my 100% this time."
Three other former US Open champions are also on the main-draw entry list: Daniil Medvedev, Sloane Stephens and Emma Raducanu, who returned to the Top 100 thanks to a fourth-round effort at Wimbledon to secure her direct entry. But five more are beneath the cut-off for direct acceptance, which is currently No. 98 on the men's side and No. 96 on the women's side: Bianca Andreescu, Angelique Kerber, Naomi Osaka, Andy Murray, Dominic Thiem and Stan Wawrinka.
The three former women's champions all missed the US Open last year (Andreescu due to injury, and Kerber and Osaka while on maternity leave), and all three exhausted the two Grand Slam entry limits afforded to them by the rules governing protected rankings at the three majors already played this year. With her current ranking of No. 102, Osaka is the sixth alternate to the main draw, while Andreescu's current ranking of No. 172 puts her much further down the list; Kerber, currently ranked No. 218, is not on the alternates list.
On the men's side, Wawrinka is the seventh alternate at No. 105; Murray is the 26th alternate at No. 123; and Thiem, who has said he'll retire from tennis at the end of 2024, is the 36th alternate at No. 133. Should an initially-accepted player withdraw from the entry list prior to the start of the US Open Qualifying Tournament, they will be replaced in the field by the first alternate next in.
The U.S. leads all nations with 15 women and 10 men receiving direct entry. In addition to Gauff, Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins, Madison Keys, Emma Navarro, Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul and Ben Shelton are all ranked inside the world's Top 15.
The tournament entries will be augmented by 16 wild cards (eight in each singles draw) and 32 qualifiers (16 men and 16 women), who will look to earn their place in the field during the US Open Qualifying Tournament played during US Open Fan Week. The 2024 US Open main draw will be played from Monday, Aug. 26, to Sunday, Sept. 8, at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, and US Open Fan Week begins a week prior on Aug. 19. Individual tickets and ticket plans are on sale now at Ticketmaster.
