Venus Williams, a seven-time major champion, and Sofia Kenin, the winner of the 2020 Australian Open, head the list of the eight women who have been given wild cards into the 2022 US Open women’s singles main draw.

Due to reciprocal wild card deals with Tennis Australia and the French Tennis Federation, Venus and Sofia will be joined by fellow Americans CoCo Vandeweghe, Elizabeth Mandlik, Peyton Stearns, Eleana Yu, Australia’s Jaimee Fourlis, and France’s Harmony Tan.

Williams, 42, will compete in her 23rd US Open main draw match. The 2000 and 2001 US Open singles winner missed the competition in 2017 due to an injury, and she remained out for over a year until making a comeback in June to compete in mixed doubles at Wimbledon.

She has participated in a full schedule of singles matches this summer in the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati, the National Bank Open in Toronto, and the Citi Open in Washington, DC.

On the other hand, Kenin is also making her way back from an injury. With her victory at the 2020 Australian Open, she became the most recent American woman to win a Grand Slam singles title. The 23-year-old made her own comeback at the Citi Open after missing four months of this year due to an ankle ailment.

While everything was going on, Vandeweghe, the doubles champion at the 2018 US Open, recently won her largest championship in six years by winning both the singles and doubles competitions at a WTA 125 Series event in Concord, Massachusetts. These events are the WTA’s equivalent of ATP Challenger competitions.

The former world No. 9 has had a many of seasons of health problems and injury, but this week’s Concord victory helped her climb over 70 spots in the WTA singles rankings to No. 125.

Mandlik, Stearns, and Yu, among others, will all be playing in their first Grand Slam main-draw match after competing for their wild cards.

While Stearns, from Mason, Ohio, won the 2022 NCAA singles titles to conclude her sophomore year at the University of Texas, Mandlik won the US Open Wild Card Challenge, which awards the American men and woman who earn the most points at summer hard-court with a US Open wild card.

The USTA Girls’ 18s national winner is Yu, 17, who is also from Ohio.

From August 29 through September 11 in Flushing, New York, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center will host the 2022 US Open.

(Inputs from IANS)