The final grand slam of the season is already upon us, with the US Open getting going on Monday. (More Tennis News)
Flushing Meadows will welcome the best and brightest as they aim to light up New York City, where home favourite Coco Gauff will be the defending women's singles champion.
She clinched her maiden major title at Arthur Ashe Stadium last year, overcoming Aryna Sabalenka 2-6 6-3 6-2.
Gauff will be the third seed at this year's tournament, with Sabalenka second and world number one – the fearsome Iga Swiatek – rated as the favourite.
With the help of Opta data, we look into the likely challengers for this year's title.
Will Swiatek cap stellar year?
Swiatek has won 55 matches in 2024, which is the most of any player on the WTA Tour. She also has the longest winning streak in Tour-level events this season, too, having reeled off 21 straight victories.
The all-conquering Pole has won six Tour-level events this term – the United Cup, Qatar Open, Indian Wells Open, Madrid Open, Italian Open and French Open. Unsurprisingly, Swiatek also has the best win percentage of any player across 2024 (88.7%, having lost just seven of her 62 matches).
Swiatek – who clinched bronze at the Paris Olympics – has won all six finals she has been involved in this term, becoming the third player this century after the Williams sisters to triumph in their first six finals of a season across multiple years (2022 and 2024).
The 23-year-old holds a record of 79-17 at grand slams, and the best winning percentage of any active player (82.3%). Among players to have started their career in the Open Era, only six players could achieve 80 wins in fewer major matches than Swiatek (97) – Monica Seles (86), Chris Evert (89), Martina Hingis (92), Serena Williams, Steffi Graf (93 each) and Venus Williams (94).
She will face qualifier Kamilla Rakhimova in the first round. Swiatek has won in straight sets in all her previous eight matches against qualifiers or lucky losers, while she is also undefeated in her five first-round ties at the US Open.
In fact, the last time Swiatek lost in the opening match of an event was at the WTA Finals 2021 in Guadalajara. She has played 48 tournaments since then without ever falling at the first hurdle (United Cup and Olympics included).
Among current players with 10+ main draw matches played at the US Open, only Bianca Andreescu (85.7%) and Naomi Osaka (81.5%) have a higher winning percentage at Flushing Meadows than Swiatek (80.0%).
Sabalenka on song
Swiatek and Sabalenka tussled on the clay courts earlier in the season, but the latter has endured a difficult summer swing and had to skip the Olympics.
But she returned to form at the Cincinnati Open, triumphing over Jessica Pegula to claim her second title of the season.
Her first was the Australian Open, and that means Sabalenka could become the first woman to win both hard-court grand slams in the same year since Angelique Kerber in 2016. Indeed, since the Australian Open switched to hard court in 1988, the Belarusian could be the fifth woman to reach both hard-court major finals in successive seasons after Graf (1988-90, 1993-94), Seles (1991-92), Hingis (1997-99) and Victoria Azarenka (2012-13).
Like Swiatek, Sabalenka will take on a qualifier (Priscilla Hon) in round one. She won her previous meeting with Hon, back in Mumbai in 2017. The top two seeds will both face qualifiers in the first round of a grand slam for the first time since the Australian Open 1996 (Seles and Conchita Martinez).
Sabalenka is undefeated in her six first-round ties at Flushing Meadows, while she is aiming to be the fourth player in the Open Era to win the title in Cincinnati and New York in the same season, with Gauff having done just that last year.
Only Swiatek (25) and Emma Navarro (24) have won more hard-court matches than Sabalenka in 2024 (23), while the previous season's runner-up at the US Open has only lost in the first round on one occasion in the Open Era (Pam Shriver in 1979).
Gauff and Pegula the fan favourites
The Olympics ultimately ended in tears and frustration for Gauff, and after reaching the semi-finals of the Australian Open and French Open, her season is somewhat threatening to peter out. Indeed, her only title this year came in the first tournament of the campaign, in Auckland.
Yet as one of four American players since 2000 to win the singles title at the US Open, she will be fiercely determined to retain her crown at Flushing Meadows and will be backed by vociferous home support.
The world number three is not the only home favourite in with a firm chance, though.
Pegula won nine successive main-draw matches, equalling her longest career winning streak, across her campaigns at the Canadian Open and Cincinnati Open, before losing to Sabalenka in the final of the latter tournament.
The sixth seed could become only the fourth player in the Open Era to reach the singles finals at the Canadian Open, Cincinnati Open and US Open in a season after Rosemary Casals (1970), Evonne Goolagong Cawley (1973) and Serena Williams (2013).
The other contenders
Emma Raducanu has not had quite the hard-court swing she would have liked, but the youngster triumphed in New York as a teenager back in 2021, and will be one to keep an eye on.
Jasmine Paolini heads to Flushing Meadows fresh from claiming Olympic gold at Roland-Garros, where she also reached the French Open final earlier this year. The Italian has both hit the most winners (409) and converted the most break points (80) in singles matches at grand slams in 2024.
She will go up against 2019 US Open winner Bianca Andreescu in round one, making the duo the first players to face each other in the women's singles at Roland-Garros, Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows in the same season since Serena Williams and Justine Henin in 2007.
Elena Rybakina, meanwhile, has served the most aces (85) at majors this year.
Then there is two-time US Open champion Naomi Osaka. She will go up against Jelena Ostapenko, and combined with Sofia Kenin taking on Raducanu, it makes this tournament the first time that two former grand slam winners are taking each other on in first-round ties in New York since 2019.
