US Open Announces Women’s Singles Wild Card Recipients

The USTA today announced that two-time US Open singles champion Venus Williams and fellow Americans Clervie Ngounoue, Julieta Pareja, Caty McNally, Valerie Glozman and Alyssa Ahn will receive singles main draw wild cards into the 2025 US Open, as well as France’s Caroline Garcia and Australian Talia Gibson, as part of reciprocal agreements.

The 2025 US Open Singles Main Draws will be played August 24-September 7 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y.

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Williams, 45, is a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion, including twice at the US Open (2000, 2001). Williams returned to action last month at the Mubadala Citi DC Open in Washington, D.C, playing her first match in 16 months and earning her first singles victory in nearly two years. With the victory, Williams became the oldest player to win a WTA Tour-level singles match in more than 21 years.

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Ngounoue, 19, reached a career-best ranking of world No. 191 last month after winning her second singles title of the season at an ITF World Tennis Tour W50 event in Spain. The former world No. 1 junior will be returning to the US Open for the first time since 2023, when she received a wild card after winning the singles title at the USTA Billie Jean King Girls’ 18s National Championship, her only previous Grand Slam main draw appearance.

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Pareja, 16, is currently ranked as the No. 1 junior in the world. She reached the girls’ singles and doubles final at Wimbledon earlier this summer and achieved a career-best professional ranking of world No. 317 earlier this year following a run to the semifinals of the WTA 250 event in Bogota, Colombia as a qualifier.

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McNally, 23, earned her wild card by winning the US Open Wild Card Challenge, buoyed by her singles title at the USTA Pro Circuit W100 event in Evansville, Ind., last month. Click here to view the final US Open Wild Card Challenge standings. The title was McNally’s second of the month of July, after taking home the crown at the WTA 125 event in Newport, R.I. She now finds herself on the cusp of breaking back into the WTA Top 100, with a current ranking of world No. 104.

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Glozman, 18, earned her wild card by winning the women’s singles title at the inaugural American Collegiate Wild Card Playoffs in June. The reigning ACC Freshman of the Year at Stanford, Glozman bested a field of the top American collegiate players at the new event designed to increase the number of US Open wild cards allotted to the top college tennis players. Glozman is no stranger to New York, having competed in US Open qualifying each of the past three years.

Photo courtesy of Alyssa Ahn / MyTnnsJrny

Ahn, 18, won the singles title at the USTA Billie Jean King Girls’ 18s National Championships. The San Diego native is committed to play college tennis at Stanford this year, where she will be a teammate of fellow wild card recipient Glozman.

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Garcia, 31, will play in her final Grand Slam at the tournament at which she achieved her best Grand Slam singles result – a semifinal appearance in 2022 – as she announced she will retire from tennis at the end of the 2025 season. The former world No. 4 has won 11 WTA Tour titles including the WTA Finals in 2022. She earned her wild card based on a reciprocal agreement between the USTA and FFT where wild cards between the US Open and Roland Garros are exchanged.

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Gibson, 21, is currently ranked a career-best No. 107 and has won two professional singles titles this year. She earned her wild card based on a reciprocal agreement between the USTA and Tennis Australia where wild cards between the US Open and Australian Open are exchanged.

The USTA also announced the American women receiving wild cards into the US Open Qualifying tournament, held August 18-21 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center:

Fiona Crawley, 23, the former all-American at North Carolina who has won two professional singles titles this year; Hina Inoue, 22, who has won one professional singles title this year; Ayana Akli, 24, who won her first professional singles title in May and is currently ranked a career-best world No. 285; Monika Ekstrand, 18, who reached the final of the W100 event in Cary, N.C., last month as a qualifier and has won two professional singles titles this year; Kristina Penickova, 15, the current No. 5 junior in the world who has won two Grand Slam girls’ doubles titles this year; Akasha Urhobo, 18, who reached the singles final at the W35 event in Boca Raton, Fla., this spring; Alexis Nguyen, 17, a rising high school senior who is committed to play college tennis at North Carolina; Mary Stoiana, 22, an all-American at Texas A&M who was the runner-up at the American Collegiate Wild Card Playoffs; and Maya Iyengar, 18, the USTA Girls’ 18s national singles runner-up.

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Courtesy of US Open. Top photo credit: Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons