The first player standing between Serena Williams and a historic United States Open title: Vitalia Diatchenko, a Russian ranked 86th.
The draw for the United States Open was announced Thursday morning, laying out Williams’s path to become the first woman to win all four Grand Slam events in one year since Steffi Graf in 1988. She has won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon.
In the second round, Williams would face a qualifier or Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, a Croatian veteran who beat second-seeded Simona Halep to reach the fourth round of the Open last year.