Wildcards for former champions Osaka, Thiem, Wawrinka, Andreescu – Firstpost

Two-time champion Naomi Osaka and other former winners Stan Wawrinka, Dominic Thiem and Bianca Andreescu received wildcards for the US Open on Wednesday.

Osaka won the first of her four major titles in 2018 at Flushing Meadows and won again in 2020. But like the other previous champions who received wildcards from the United States Tennis Association (USTA), she has missed a lot of time in recent seasons and was not ranked high enough to qualify directly for the tournament.

Osaka returned to the tour this season after giving birth to a daughter last year, but she is still searching for the form that took her to the top of the rankings and made her one of the most dominant players on hard courts, as well as winning the Australian Open twice.

Osaka, who has also retired from professional sport for mental health reasons, lost the qualification for this week’s Cincinnati Open.

In a subsequent Instagram post, she wrote that it was a strange feeling, “missing balls I shouldn’t have missed, hitting balls that were softer than I remembered.”

Andreescu, who defeated Serena Williams at the 2019 US Open, missed nine months last year with a back injury before returning at the French Open this year.

Thiem will get the chance to play his final Grand Slam tournament after announcing earlier this year that he would retire after the season. The 30-year-old Austrian won his only major title at the 2020 US Open but has struggled with a wrist injury for much of the past three years.

Wawrinka, 39, won the 2016 US Open, one of his three Grand Slam titles. Like Thiem, he rose to third place in the ATP rankings but has fallen out of the top 100. He will be making his 72nd Grand Slam main draw appearance, the fifth most of all time.

Other players receiving a wildcard include Americans Amanda Anisimova, McCartney Kessler, Alexa Noel and Iva Jovic in the women’s main draw, along with Chloe Paquet of France and Taylah Preston of Australia.

In the men’s competition, Americans Chris Eubanks, Learner Tien, Zachary Svajda and Matthew Forbes as well as Frenchman Alexandre Muller and Australian Tristan Schoolkate received wildcards.

The US Open begins on August 26th.