Updated Aug. 26, 2026: The men’s list has changed again. The USTA said Wednesday morning that Patrick Kypson has withdrawn with an injury and that his main-draw wild card passes to Stan Wawrinka. The 2016 champion, who is retiring at the end of the season, had not entered qualifying and had said last month that he asked for an invitation and did not receive one, which appeared to have ended his last route into the draw. This supersedes the Aug. 23 entry below, which recorded Kypson as the final men’s recipient and Wawrinka as unsuccessful. Three of the eight men’s main-draw wild cards have now changed hands after being awarded. Alexei Popyrin and Martin Damm each gained direct entry as withdrawals moved the cutoff, releasing their invitations to Dane Sweeny and Darwin Blanch; Kypson’s withdrawal has released the third. The women’s list is unchanged. Departures from both singles fields are tracked on our US Open withdrawals page. The main draw begins Aug. 30.
Updated Aug. 23, 2026: Both lists are now complete. The USTA awarded the final women’s main-draw wild card to Sofia Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion, and the final men’s wild card to Patrick Kypson, the highest-ranked American outside the main draw at No. 115. The women’s place had been held open for Serena Williams, who will not play singles in New York and has instead taken a wild card into the Mixed Doubles Championship with Carlos Alcaraz. Two earlier reallocations also stand: after Alexei Popyrin and Martin Damm both gained direct entry following withdrawals, Popyrin’s wild card passed to Dane Sweeny under the reciprocal agreement with Tennis Australia and Damm’s passed to Darwin Blanch. Stan Wawrinka, the 2016 champion and retiring at the end of this season, did not receive one and was not entered in qualifying.
Updated Aug. 18, 2026: The discretionary wild cards have landed. The USTA announced seven of the eight main-draw places in each singles draw on Tuesday, leaving one slot marked “to be announced” on both lists. The women’s recipients are Venus Williams, Sloane Stephens, Carol Young Suh Lee, Reese Brantmeier, Thea Frodin, Leolia Jeanjean and Taylah Preston. The men’s are Gael Monfils, Alexei Popyrin, Martin Damm, Michael Zheng, JJ Wolf, Jack Kennedy and Sebastian Gorzny. Williams, 46, and Stephens are both former champions in New York; Monfils and Popyrin are the two non-Americans, Popyrin entering through the reciprocal agreement with Tennis Australia. Kei Nishikori, who like Monfils is retiring at the end of the season, received a wild card into qualifying rather than the main draw. Serena Williams is not on the women’s list and has not said whether she will play. Singles qualifying begins Monday, and the main draw starts Aug. 30.
Updated Aug. 15, 2026: The first two main-draw wild cards now have names. JJ Wolf and Carol Young Suh Lee won the men’s and women’s US Open Wild Card Challenges and enter the singles draws on those places. Wolf, who was ranked inside the top 40 as recently as 2023 and has since been rebuilding, clinched when Andres Martin went out of the Challenger 75 in Brownsburg, Indiana; his Challenger 125 title in Vancouver was his first at that level since 2021. Lee, 24, sealed the women’s race by qualifying for and then winning the WTA 125 in Warsaw, finishing ahead of Caroline Dolehide and Elvina Kalieva. It will be her first US Open. The discretionary wild cards, which are the bulk of the 16 available in each draw, have still not been announced.
NEW YORK — The entry lists for the US Open have been settled for more than a week. The wild cards have not, and they are now the only part of the field still genuinely in play. The United States Tennis Association published its main-draw entry lists on July 21, built on the ATP and WTA rankings of July 20. The cutoff landed at No. 101 in the men’s draw and No. 102 in the women’s.
Everyone below those lines needs either a qualifying run or an invitation. A handful of those invitations are already gone, and they went to college players. The USTA staged its American Collegiate Player Wildcard Playoffs at its National Campus in Orlando in June, a four-player invitational restricted to American citizens who compete in the college game.
Sebastian Gorzny, a recent University of Texas graduate and the reigning Intercollegiate Tennis Association Division I men’s senior player of the year, beat SMU’s Trevor Svajda in the final to take the men’s singles main-draw place. Reese Brantmeier of North Carolina beat Tennessee’s Katrina Scott to claim the women’s.
“I was relieved to get the win, and I don’t really think it’s going to sink in that I’m playing in the U.S. Open until I get there and actually step on court,” Gorzny said in a statement released by Texas Athletics.
Svajda and Scott, as the beaten finalists, received wild cards into the respective qualifying draws. Two doubles teams also came through the event: Brandon Carpico and Nikita Filin of Ohio State on the men’s side, and Auburn’s DJ Bennett and Ava Esposito on the women’s. Six wild cards in total, all decided before the North American hard-court swing had begun.
Two more main-draw places will be settled on court over the next fortnight. The US Open Wild Card Challenge, which opened July 13, awards one men’s and one women’s main-draw spot to the American who accumulates the most ranking points across a defined window of hard-court events. The women’s challenge closes August 9.
The men’s runs a week longer, through August 16. Americans who would otherwise earn direct entry are ineligible, and if the leader qualifies by ranking anyway, the place rolls down to the next eligible player. Amanda Anisimova and Learner Tien both won the challenge in 2024 and are now inside the world’s top 20.
A further pair of places are spoken for by agreement rather than merit, and those two are now filled. The USTA, Tennis Australia and the French federation operate a reciprocal system under which each major’s host nation receives two wild cards at the other two events to distribute as it chooses. Wimbledon does not participate. The French federation announced on August 5 that it had given its pair to Gael Monfils and Leolia Jeanjean. Monfils, ranked No. 347 and retiring at the end of the season, had said in Montreal that a singles wild card in New York was one of his remaining goals, and the invitation sets up an 18th appearance at the tournament. Jeanjean, a former world No. 91, takes the women’s place. The decision was not universally welcomed in France, where some argued the invitation should have gone to a player in current form. That leaves the discretionary pile, and the queue for it is long.
Jack Draper, a US Open semifinalist in 2024 and seeded fifth in New York a year ago, has slipped to No. 147 after a season broken up by arm and knee problems. He sits on the alternate list with more than 40 players ahead of him. Grigor Dimitrov, No. 142, reached the fourth round at Wimbledon this year but withdrew from Los Cabos in late July after tests confirmed bursitis in his leg. Stan Wawrinka, three times a major champion and retiring at the end of the season, is No. 118 and absent from the entry list altogether, and unlike Monfils he has no reciprocal invitation to fall back on.
The American cases are their own category. Sofia Kenin, a former world No. 4 and Australian Open champion, is close enough to the cut that withdrawals alone could carry her in as an alternate. Sloane Stephens, who won the title here in 2017, is ranked outside the top 300 and played the WTA 250 in Memphis on a wild card. Taylor Townsend, at No. 106, reached the fourth round in New York last year.
And then there are the two names that need no explanation. Venus Williams already received a main-draw wild card into the National Bank Open in Toronto, which is under way. Serena Williams is not entered anywhere on the hard-court swing. The USTA’s wild card committee works to criteria it describes only in general terms — good standing, special circumstances — and it has not said when the remaining names will be announced. The main draws begin August 30.
