WIMBLEDON, England – With 20 of the 128 players in the Wimbledon draw and five of the top seven seeds, American women’s tennis hasn’t been this dominant since the early 1980s.

If this was the U.S. Open, where eight wild cards are given out, there might be as many as 28 U.S. women playing in the same Grand Slam.

You have to go back to 1981, when the top four ranked players at the end of the season were American, to find U.S. tennis this strong on the women’s side, and the depth of American women’s tennis may never have been stronger, either.

In 1981, Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Martina Navratilova and Andrea Jaeger were ranked one through four and Pam Shriver at No. 7 and Barbara Potter at No. 10 made it six among the elite.

This year, 16 U.S. women, more than from any other country, were ranked high enough to get directly into Wimbledon.

Corina Morariu of Boca Raton, whose ranking has slipped to 225 after missing much of this year with a shoulder injury, was given a wild card and another three qualified- Carly Gullickson, Bea Bielik and Lilia Osterloh.

American women easily out-performed U.S. men in the qualifying here. Gullickson, 16, of Brentwood, Tenn., and Bielik, 22, of Valley Stream, N.Y., won three qualifying matches to make their first Wimbledon main draw. Osterloh, 25, of Columbus, Ohio, got in as a lucky loser when Amelie Mauresmo withdrew Friday with a rib injury.

For Gullickson, daughter of former major league pitcher Bill Gullickson, it’s her first Grand Slam main draw. Bielik, a former NCAA singles champion from Wake Forest, is playing her second major after reaching the third round of the 2002 U.S. Open. Osterloh made the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2000.

Shenay Perry of Sunrise, Fla., ranked 183, lost her first-round qualifying match to Aniko Kapros 6-2, 5-7, 6-1. She was planning to fly home today, have a further check on her injuried hamstring, then go to Los Gatos, Calif., for a $50,000 challenger event.

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(c) 2003 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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AP-NY-06-21-03 1634EDT