There looks to be plenty of value in the women’s draw given five of the last seven winners have come from outside the top-ten and two of those winners unseeded, including last year’s winner Emma Raducanu at 150 in the world.
Champion
Recent form is everything with 13 of the last 15 winners of the US Open have a win record of 67% since June leading into the tournament and Brazilian Beatriz Haddad Maia fits the bill. The left-hander has the fifth best record of all players since June at 17-5 (77%) which remarkably included a shock first-round loss at Wimbledon.
The Brazilian has bounced back since reaching the Final at Toronto with wins over 2021 Finalist Leylah Fernandez, world number 1 Iga Swiatek, and top-15 players Belinda Bencic and Karolina Pliskova. Haddad Maia will need to get past 2019 Champion Bianca Andreescu in the second round, but if she can do that has a nice run to the Quarter Finals where she’ll likely face Simona Halep in a rematch of the Toronto Final.
She fits the profile of a breakout Grand Slam winner, and we’ve seen weirder things happen at Flushing Meadows – Raducanu last year, Andreescu in 2019, Osaka 2018 and Stephens 2017 are all perfect examples.
Runner Up
The US Open is clearly Belinda Bencic’s best major historically, with a 16-6 career record at Flushing Meadows including a Semi Final (2019) and two Quarter Final appearances (2014 & 2021) in just six tournaments.
A Quarter Finalist at Toronto in the lead-up where she went down to our predicted winner, Haddad Maia, in three sets, it remains a somewhat tricky draw for Bencic in what is the most difficult quarter of the draw featuring Sabalenka, Rybakina, Osaka, Raducanu, Pliskova, Azarenka, Badosa and Bouskova.
But there’s no denying the historical US Open form for the Swiss and she could go one step further than her 2019 run.
Semi Finalists
Aside from world number one Iga Swiatek, the first quarter of the draw appears quite straight forward which gives American Jessica Pegula a huge opportunity for a deep run in her home country.
The world number 8 fits the hard-court profile better than just about any other player in the world, making the Quarter Final stage of three of the big four hard court tournaments this year – a Cincinnati Quarter Final, plus Semi Final runs at Toronto and Miami earlier in the year.
Swiatek is clearly the main danger in that quarter, but the Pole has an underwhelming record of 6-4 since June and is not playing her best tennis entering the US Open.
An incredible run by the Russian has Daria Kasatkina back inside the top-10 for the first time since January 2019.
Kasatkina has a 14-5 record since June including wins at San Jose and Granby this week, and prior to this she was a Semi Finalist at the French Open.
The Russian gets an extremely friendly draw here. She could potentially meet Wimbledon Finalist Ons Jabeur in the fourth round, but the Tunisian has lost her way a bit since throwing away a Grand Slam title up a set against Rybakina.
The Anett Kontaveit quarter is the one players want to feature in and the $6.50 for Kasatkina taking out the quarter is extraordinary value.
Roughies
A 19-year-old with a major victory over Simona Halep, a win over Ons Jabeur in the lead-up, and the only player to take a set off Iga Swiatek at the last French Open.
Qinwen Zheng has a 10-5 record since June, and is a player on the rise now ranked 40 in the world after starting the year at 126.
The Chinese youngster was a Quarter Finalist at Toronto in the lead-up and poses a huge threat to Jelena Ostapenko in the first-round. iIf she wins that, there’s no reason she can’t feature well into the second week.
The injury in the lead-up poses a concern but if Marie Bouzkova has recovered and is fully fit, she can do some damage to this draw.
The Czech has the fourth best record on tour since June at 14-3 (82%), reaching the Wimbledon Quarter Final followed by winning at Prague.
She caused Ons Jabeur real problems in their Wimbledon Quarter Final due to her court coverage and despite being ranked 41 in the world, if they included points for Wimbledon we’d likely see Bouzkova just outside the top 20 for the US Open.
