US Open wildcards awarded to former champs Venus & Thiem

Venus Williams Dominic Thiem US Open 2022 wildcards

August 17, 2022

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US Open wildcards awarded to former champions Venus Williams and Dominic Thiem

Dominic Thiem and Venus Williams will both return to the main draw of the US Open singles after receiving wildcards to the final Slam of the season.

Both will make their first appearance since the 2020 event, when the duo experienced very different fortunes in New York.

In her 22nd US Open main draw, Venus suffered her first opening round defeat there, losing to 20th seed Karolina Muchova.

Meanwhile, Thiem went all the way to the final and defeated Alexander Zverev from two serts to love down to clinch his maiden Major triumph.

Venus did not play competitively between the 2021 Chicago women’s Open just before the 2021 US Open and the 2022 Wimbledon mixed doubles, whilst Thiem was sidelined with injury between June 2021 and March 2022.

Thiem is currently ranked 228th in the world, whereas Venus is a lowly 1500th in the rankings without a singles win to her name since Wimbledon last year.

Her 2022 participation will come 25 years after her first, when she reached the 1997 final on her main draw debut aged 17 before losing to Martina Hingis.

Two years after his 🏆, Dominic Thiem is back! pic.twitter.com/CDqpdRZfpw
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) August 17, 2022

Women’s singles wildcards were awarded to other Americans in 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin, CoCo Vandeweghe, Elizabeth Mandlik, Peyton Stearns and Eleana Yu.

Like Venus and Thiem, Kenin has not competed in New York since 2020.

Sam Querrey, Emilio Nava, JJ Wolf, Ben Shelton and Learner Tien are the American men who have received singles wildcards.