Serena, Venus on course for early Open meeting

Serena and Venus Williams could be headed toward their earliest Grand Slam meeting in 20 years, facing a potential third-round matchup at the U.S. Open.

If the sisters do play each other, the winner might face No. 1-ranked Simona Halep in the fourth round.

That is certainly the most intriguing section of the women's and men's brackets revealed at Thursday's draw for the last major of the year.

This marks Serena's return to Flushing Meadows after

missing the hard-court tournament in 2017 — she gave birth to her daughter last Sept. 1.

The 36-year-old American has won six of her 23 Grand Slam titles at the U.S. Open and was given the No. 17 seed by the U.S. Tennis Association — nine places above her current ranking.

Venus, who won five of her seven Grand Slam singles trophies in New York, is ranked and seeded 16th. She faces a tricky first-round match against Svetlana Kuznetsova, whose two major championships include the 2004 U.S. Open.

Kuznetsova was given a wild-card entry for the tournament, where main-draw play begins Monday.

Serena's opener comes against 60th-ranked Magda Linette of Poland. Should the Williams siblings both make it to the third round, they would play each other at a Grand Slam tournament sooner than they have since Venus beat Serena in the second round at the 1998 Australian Open — their very first head-to-head match on tour.

They've gone on to play a total of 29 times — Serena leads 17-12 — and that includes nine all-in-the-family Grand Slam finals, most recently at the 2017 Australian Open.

In the men's field, No. 1ranked and defending champion Rafael Nadal opens against David Ferrer in an allSpanish rematch of their 2013 French Open final. No. 2 Roger Federer plays Japan's Yoshihito Nishioka in the first round.

Federer faces a potential quarterfinal against No. 6 seed Novak Djokovic, the Wimbledon champion who beat him two weeks ago in a tuneup and is considered the tournament favorite. No. 4 seed Alexander Zverev and seventh-seeded Marin Cilic, the 2014 U.S. Open champion, are also in Federer's half of the draw along with No. 30 seed Nick Kyrgios, the Australian whom Federer could meet in the third round.

Stan Wawrinka, the 2016 U.S. Open champion who missed last year's tournament because of injury and was given a wild card into this year's field, faces No. 8 seed Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria in one of the headline matches of the first round.