Will the strong summer for American women continue in US Open qualifying?
The home country boasts 22 players, the most of any nation, in the 64-player women's draw that was released on Sunday, with 16 spots in the main draw up for grabs for the players who record three victories over the next week.
Three recent U.S. junior Grand Slam singles champions are among the home hopes looking to add to the U.S. representation in the main draw, including No. 6 seed Robin Montgomery, the 2021 US Open girls' singles champion, and two former junior Wimbledon winners: Liv Hovde and Clervie Ngounoue, each of whom received wild cards.
Hovde, who won Wimbledon in 2022, will face Germany's Nastasja Schunk in the first round, with the winner assured of facing an American: either No. 3 seed Hailey Baptiste or junior world No. 4 Tyra Caterina Grant, a 16-year-old who this year has reached three Grand Slam junior doubles finals (winning two) with main-draw wild card Iva Jovic.
Ngounoue, who followed Hovde as the champion at the All England Club with her win last summer, faces former Top 100 mainstay Heather Watson of Great Britain in the first round, with the winner to face No. 2 qualifying seed Aliaksandra Sasnovich or Harmony Tan, the Frenchwoman who famously ended Serena Williams' Wimbledon career in 2022.
The top seed in women's qualifying is Kamilla Rakhimova, the world No. 94. In 2021, she reached the third round of the main draw in New York as a lucky loser, which to date remains her best Grand Slam effort.
Other players to watch include No. 8 qualifying seed of Serbia, who made the fourth round at Roland Garros in the spring; No. 27 Sara Bejlek, an 18-year-old from the Czech Republic who in 2022 was the youngest player in the US Open main draw; and 2016 US Open quarterfinalist Ana Konjuh, who is featuring at a major for the first time since the qualifying tournament of last year's Wimbledon. Now 26, the oft-injured Croat missed the last six months of 2023 and has only played eight matches this year.
View the women's singles qualifying draw and Monday's order of play on USOpen.org. The US Open Qualifying Tournament begins Monday and runs through Thursday as one of the anchor events of US Open Fan Week.
