2024 US Open: Coco Gauff aims to follow in the footsteps of the 2024 Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, who retained the title he won last year. GAUFF is the defending champion of the US Open. Experts think she has all it takes…

The 2024 US Open will be held between August 26th and September 8th, and the entry list for the season’s final major has been revealed.

Last year, the home crowd at the Flushing Meadows was delighted as their player lifted the trophy after two weeks at the US Open. Coco Gauff won her first major, and she will try to do the same also in 2024.

However, the young American wasn’t able to add to her collection of Grand Slam titles during the 2023 season, as Aryna Sabalenka won the Australian Open, Iga Swiatek won the French Open, and Barbora Krejcikova won Wimbledon.

Those three will be among the top favorites with Gauff, especially Swiatek, who is a former champion, having won the tournament in 2022, and Sabalenka, who was the player who lost in last year’s final, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, and she also played in two back-to-back semi-finals prior to that.

One player not to count out will be Elena Rybakina. The Kazakhstani player knows how it feels to win a Grand Slam title, having won the 2022 Wimbledon Championships, but so far, she couldn’t make a deep run at Flushing Meadows.

The last major of the season has been Rybakina’s worst so far, as she never made it past the third round, losing more matches than she won in New York, with a shocking 4-5 record. Last year, after two first-round, one second-round, and one third-round exits, she made it to the third round again, but lost in a three-set match to Sorana Cirstea, who will compete in 2024 too.

One of the top dark horses in the United States will be Jasmine Paolini. In her career, she never made it past the second round in New York, and in her four appearances, she won only one match, but there is one big however.

Prior to the 2024 season, she won only three matches at Roland Garros, and she has never won a match at Wimbledon, yet, she reached back-to-back finals at those Grand Slams and climbed into the Top 3 of the 2024 WTA Race, surpassing even the likes of Rybakina and Gauff.

But as always at Grand Slams, the list of dark horses could be really long. Home players will want to thrive in the loud environment, as besides the defending champion Gauff, Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins, Madison Keys, and Emma Navarro should be among the seeded players. On top of that, another former champion, Sloane Stephens, should also compete at the tournament.

Plenty of players who have previously struggled with some injuries have used their special ranking to enter the tournament. This includes the likes of Ajla Tomljanovic, Shelby Rogers, Lauren Davis, and Qiang Wang.

Like Stephens, Emma Raducanu is another former champion who made it to the main draw, especially thanks to her run at Wimbledon, which boosted her ranking enough for her to make it as the fourth player before the cut-off line.

However, there will be plenty of former champions, who will need to await either for withdrawals of other players or a wild card from tournament organizers.

Two-time champion Naomi Osaka is sixth under the line, and her chances of making it to the main draw are very high, as there are usually at least six withdrawals in the period from when the entry list is announced until the major starts.

However, 2019 champion, Bianca Andreescu, is much lower on the entry list, and she doesn’t have a realistic chance of making it through withdrawals of others, so she will either have to enter the qualifying or hope for a wild card.

2016 champion, Angelique Kerber,c currently ranked 218th, doesn’t even appear on the entry list, so she, too, will probably need to rely on the wild card. The full entry list for the 2024 US Open can be viewed below.