NEW YORK — Novak Djokovic’s return to the U.S. Open after lacking it final 12 months as a result of he wasn’t vaccinated towards COVID-19 will come towards an opponent who by no means has performed within the match, whereas defending girls’s champion Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff had been drawn Thursday right into a potential quarterfinal matchup.
Top-ranked Carlos Alcaraz, the 2022 males’s champion at Flushing Meadows, and No. 6 seed Jannik Sinner might meet within the males’s quarterfinals once more. That was the spherical wherein Alcaraz’s thrilling five-set victory over rival Sinner final 12 months ended at 2:50 a.m., the newest end in U.S. Open historical past.
Instead of a public draw ceremony, the U.S. Tennis Association has arrange its girls’s and males’s singles brackets behind closed doorways lately and did so once more Thursday, when The Associated Press was invited to have a reporter current in a room at Arthur Ashe Stadium as an observer.
Play within the last Grand Slam occasion of the season begins Monday.
Djokovic, a 36-year-old from Serbia who has received three of his males’s-record 23 Grand Slam titles in New York, couldn’t enter the match a 12 months in the past as a result of unvaccinated overseas residents had been barred from flying into the United States. He returned to the nation for the primary time in two years to play within the hard-court tune-up occasion in Cincinnati, the place he outlasted Alcaraz in an exhilarating last final weekend that spanned practically 4 hours.
In the primary spherical subsequent week, Djokovic will tackle Alexandre Muller, a 26-year-old from France who’s ranked eighty fifth and might be making his main-draw debut at Flushing Meadows. Muller misplaced within the opening spherical of qualifying in 2021 and 2022. He has not had a lot luck in Grand Slam attracts currently, pressured to face Alcaraz at Wimbledon and Sinner on the French Open.
Gauff, the No. 6 seed, beat Swiatek en path to the Cincinnati title – a major victory for the 19-year-old American who had been 0-7 and misplaced all 14 units to the 22-year-old from Poland, together with the 2022 French Open last. Gauff, who’s 11-1 since a first-round exit at Wimbledon, will open towards a participant who emerges from the qualifying match after which might meet Russian teen Mirra Andreeva in what can be a rematch from this 12 months’s French Open.
Alcaraz will play Dominik Koepfer of Germany within the first spherical. Koepfer reached the fourth spherical at Flushing Meadows in 2019.
Along with Alcaraz-Sinner, different potential males’s quarterfinals are 2021 champion Daniil Medvedev vs. No. 8 Andrey Rublev within the prime half of the bracket, and No. 2 Djokovic vs. No. 7 Stefanos Tsitsipas, and No. 4 Holger Rune vs. 2022 runner-up Casper Ruud within the backside half.
Tsitsipas begins off towards Milos Raonic, the 2016 Wimbledon runner-up who was ranked as excessive as No. 3 however was off the tour for practically two full years with accidents earlier than returning in June.
In addition to Swiatek-Gauff, potential girls’s quarterfinals are No. 4 Elena Rybakina vs. No. 8 Maria Sakkari within the prime half, and No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka towards 2022 runner-up Ons Jabeur, and No. 3 Jessica Pegula vs. No. 7 Caroline Garcia within the backside.
Pegula, who’s 0-6 in Grand Slam quarterfinals, performs Camila Giorgi of Italy within the first spherical.
Venus Williams, who received two of her seven Grand Slam singles titles on the U.S. Open however wanted a wild-card invitation to compete this time at age 43, begins towards Spain’s Paula Badosa, who was ranked No. 2 final 12 months however is now No. 46.
Another former No. 1-ranked participant and main champion who wanted a wild card, Caroline Wozniacki, was drawn to satisfy a qualifier in her return to Grand Slam tennis after ending a three-year retirement. Wozniacki, who received the 2018 Australian Open and twice was the runner-up at Flushing Meadows, might play two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova within the second spherical.
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