They say everything is bigger in Texas. Judging by this year's US Open, there may be something to that. A whopping 734 players have signed up for 85 different events across the next five days. With such a plethora of events, there will be no shortage of intriguing subplots. For example, will four-time national champion Jimmy Butler take the crown, not in men's singles, which he declined to enter, but in the Sandpaper RR, where he is the top seed? While these and many other storylines preoccupy the participants and their diehard supporters, most casual fans will just want to know about the big money matches: namely, the men's and women's singles championships. The women's singles features no less than three players ranked among the top fifty in the world, two of whom represent the host nation: Wu Yue (#33) and top seed Lily Zhang (#26). Not far behind is Sweden's Matilda Ekholm, a very dangerous world #35. In fact, such is the strength of this year's field that defending champion Juan Liu is seeded a distant ninth. Meanwhile, over in the men's singles draw, it is debatable who is the top seed. Absent Kanak Jha's participation, there is no clear favorite. Judging by world rankings, Ukraine's Lei Kou is the man to beat. At world #54, he is fully 100 spaces ahead of Puerto Rico's Daniel Gonzalez, his nearest competitor. Kai Zhang is the highest-ranked American on the list, seeded fourth at world #213. Ranking the players by previous USATT results, however, paints a much different picture. Here, Lei Kou (2690) comes in fourth behind Japan's Hiromitsu Kasahara (2829) and Californians Wenzhang Tao (2778) and Xin Zhou (2741). At the end of the day, these numbers neither predict nor guarantee any results, as each match starts 0-0 and anything can happen. For the hundreds of amateurs throwing their hats in the ring for a chance to go toe-to-toe with a world-class player, there is always the hope that they could string together a miraculous series of shots and pull off a big upset. For that matter, why not gun for a Texas-sized upset?

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