Sharapova faces Halep on return

Maria Sharapova could not have landed a much tougher draw in her first grand-slam tournament since the end of her 15-month doping ban. Her first-round opponent at the US Open will be world No2 Simona Halep.

To make life even more challenging for Sharapova (right), who was granted a wild card into the main draw by the United States Tennis Association, she has barely played a match since she pulled out of the Rome Masters in May suffering from a thigh injury.

Her only appearance in the past three months came at the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, California, where she beat Jennifer Brady in the first round but then was forced to withdraw again on fitness grounds, this time because of a sore left forearm.

Halep, by contrast, has been a model of consistency in

2017, with 51 matches already under her belt. She has an excellent chance of ascending to world No 1 after this event, as she is only defending 430 points from last year’s run to the quarter-final here, 870 fewer than her main rival Karolina Pliskova. Andy Murray can be delighted with a draw that opens against world No104 Tennys Sandgren, an American with Swedish heritage, and would then potentially throw up successive meetings with Rogerio Dutra Silva, Diego Schwartzman and Lucas Pouille.

As for Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, who have never previously faced each other at the US Open, they both landed in the top half of the draw and thus would need to reach the semifinal to change that peculiar statistic.