The U.S. Open will take on a more concrete shape on Friday afternoon when the draw for the 128-player event is announced. We’ll be able to answer more questions then, but in a pre-draw environment, here are the four best bets to surprise, defined as being able to play beyond their seeding. In other words, a player seeded lower than four making the semifinals would represent playing beyond her seeding, and possibly constitute a surprise.
Johanna Konta
There is no doubt that Konta, ranked in the top 16, should be able to get to the fourth round. However, based on her ability to make a surprising run to the semifinals of the Australian Open in January, she could pull off another deep run on hardcourts, the surface where she’s most comfortable. In a world with Serena Williams and Angelique Kerber and Simona Halep and Venus Williams, Konta is not yet viewed in the same club. More than that, she lost to Eugenie Bouchard in the second round of Wimbledon, playing a very timid and nervous third set. It was easy to sell Konta short after that match because of the poor quality of her performance, but she then showed with her title in Stanford and a solid run in Canada that she is still capable of very good results on hardcourts. It’s more reasonable to chalk up the loss to Bouchard as the result of nerves and being on grass. On cement, Konta – who beat Garbine Muguruza at the 2015 U.S. Open and launched her meteoric rise in the rankings – is a player to be respected. If she makes the semis, don’t be too shocked about it.
Petra Kvitova
The longstanding view of Kvitova – who has never made the semifinals or better at the U.S. Open – is that in the noise and pollution of New York, her breathing problems and overall level of stamina won’t allow her to play her best tennis. It’s hard to deny that Kvitova doesn’t handle the conditions very well. However, consider that Angelique Kerber has played a lot of tennis over the past month. She could be tired after playing a full week of tennis at the Rio Olympics and then in Cincinnati the following week. Serena Williams has played very little tennis in recent weeks and is nursing a shoulder injury which will be hard to trust with any certainty at the U.S. Open. This could be a tournament in which the draw breaks wide open, and Kvitova’s power game could create a big run. Stranger things have happened in tennis history.
Karolina Pliskova
The big-serving, big-hitting Czech took advantage of injuries and pullouts from other players to win the Cincinnati tournament last week. With players still trying to recover from that tournament, why wouldn’t Pliskova – the higher-ranked of two sisters – make a deep run? Maybe she’s figured something out. Maybe she’s learned how to handle match pressure. Maybe something’s clicked. Maybe she won’t sustain it into 2017, but she could at least go on a two-week rampage in the Big Apple. It could happen. She’s 14-7 on hard courts this year and was 33-17 on hard courts last year. This is definitely her best surface.
Monica Puig
The gold medalist at the Olympics played so well on such a consistent basis that she might have the confidence of a top-five player, not someone who has languished in the rankings for a very long time. This could be the Grand Slam tournament in which Puig experiences a true breakthrough. It is a scenario at least some people could see, but it would probably still be surprising in a larger sense, because the tour now knows she’s more of a threat than previously thought. There’s also the fact that this will be her first showing after such an emotional run at the Olympics. She’s not really used to coming in with a bulls-eye on her back and probably would rather come in under-the-radar as she did in Rio. Regardless, this is a player who has shown capable of making some noise, so be wary of her making a deep run.
