There is a slot on the 2026 U.S. Open women's singles draw that the United States Tennis Association has deliberately left blank. It does not say "qualifying" or "lucky loser." It says, in effect: we are waiting on Serena. The USTA announced seven of its eight women's singles wild cards on August 18, conspicuously holding the eighth in reserve for a player who has not committed to the tournament, has not confirmed her schedule, and has not won a Grand Slam singles match in nearly four years. That is one kind of power.

The other kind of power on display is Venus Williams at 46, a two-time US Open singles champion now carrying a 14-match losing streak into the most celebrated tennis venue in the Western Hemisphere. The USTA awarded her a wild card anyway, a decision that has split the tennis public roughly in half — those who find it uncomfortable and those who find it unconscionable.

To be clear about the record: Venus Williams won this tournament in 2000 and 2001. She has 49 WTA singles titles and seven Grand Slam trophies. Her most recent singles win came at the Washington, D.C. Open in July 2025, after which she dropped thirteen consecutive matches and then a fourteenth at the Cincinnati Open, where she was beaten 6-2, 6-2 by a qualifier ranked far outside the top 100. At the 2025 US Open, she received a wild card and lost in the first round to Karolína Muchová, 6-3, 2-6, 6-1. The USTA has now given her the same invitation again.

The wild card system at the majors operates with almost no formal accountability. Host federations — the USTA, Tennis Australia, and the French Tennis Federation — hold a pool of discretionary entries and distribute them according to criteria that blend competitive merit with promotional logic and, under a reciprocal arrangement between the major host nations, a handful of international picks. What it does not include is any minimum performance threshold. The USTA's stated framework references past champions, injury-protected returns, American development priorities, and promotional considerations. "Promotional considerations" is doing a lot of work in Venus Williams' case.

Serena Williams, 44, returned to singles competition at Wimbledon in June 2026, nearly four years after her final appearance at the 2022 US Open, where she lost to Ajla Tomljanović in the third round in what was widely understood to be her farewell. At Wimbledon this July she pushed 20-year-old Australian Maya Joint to three competitive sets before falling 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3 — a result that, whatever its competitive ledger, electrified Centre Court and reminded the tennis world that Serena's draw card transcends wins and losses. She has not played singles since. She accepted a doubles wild card at Cincinnati alongside Venus, and the sisters lost a match tiebreak to Peyton Stearns and Marta Kostyuk in their first doubles appearance together since 2022. Serena has not indicated publicly whether she will accept a US Open singles wild card.

For context: Stan Wawrinka, the three-time Grand Slam men's champion who had been openly hoping for a US Open wild card to mark a late-career return, was passed over in the men's draw. Gaël Monfils received one, as did Australian Alexei Popyrin. The USTA, like all four Grand Slam hosts, is not required to explain or justify any of its selections, and it rarely does.

The criticism of Venus's latest wild card cuts in two directions that are worth separating. One is sporting: a player who has not won a professional match in roughly thirteen months and who is being beaten in straight sets by qualifiers is, by competitive standards, occupying a spot that a ranked player outside the cut could use. The other direction is more uncomfortable: the argument that Venus Williams, at 46, with the physical history she carries — including Sjögren's syndrome, a chronic autoimmune condition she has managed throughout her career — should be permitted to compete for as long as she wants to compete, without having to pass a results test that no male veteran of comparable stature would likely face either.

Both things can be true at once. Venus Williams can be entirely within her rights to keep playing, and the USTA can simultaneously be making a choice that is about the gate, the broadcast, and the sentimental draw of a sibling reunion — not about competitive fairness to players grinding through qualifiers who will never get a phone call from a federation with a spot to fill. The eighth wild card slot, still listed as TBA on the draw, is the clearest evidence of where the USTA's priorities sit. They are not waiting on a player with the best ranking just outside the cut. They are waiting on Serena.