Texas’s Sebastian Gorzny and North Carolina’s Reese Brantmeier have earned the first wild cards of the 2026 US Open, with the two recent graduates posting victories Thursday night in the finals of the USTA’s American Collegiate US Open Wild Card Playoffs at the National Campus in Orlando.
Gornzy, the No. 2 seed, was on the brink of victory when lightning and rain arrived, serving for the match against top seed Trevor Svajda of SMU at 6-2, 5-4 deuce. Although that could have been a frustrating delay, Gorzny didn’t view it that way.
“I think honestly it was a good thing that it happened when it did,” said the 22-year-old from Texas, who went on to close out the 6-2, 6-4 victory. “The wind picked up, and I was getting nervy there, trying to hold that last game. It gave me some time to get my mind off it, get back, think of how I wanted to play, visualize it and really go after it. I obviously would have liked to finish it before, hit two aces, but that’s not how life goes, and I’m happy to get the win and play how I wanted to play.”
Gorzny was committed to playing more aggressively during this event, and when he returned from the 95-minute delay, his resolve strengthened. He didn’t convert his first match point, with a net cord going wide, but on his second one, he swung out on his forehand, then charged the net, hitting a two-volley combination to secure his place in New York.
“I was playing aggressive the whole match, coming forward and being aggressive with my forehand,” Gorzny said. “Everyone keeps telling me, with my size and my game, that’s what I need to do. My volleys are good and I have a big wingspan at the net; that’s definitely a strength of mine that I need to bring out more. So I said, I’m going to play on my terms, and if he passes me, I lose, I can live with that, but I’m not going to live with pushing from the baseline, waiting for him to come in. I’m happy with how I played that, even if I ended up losing that.”
Brantmeier, the top seed, had taken a 6-4 first set from No. 2 seed Katrina Scott of Tennessee, converting the only break point she had at 4-all, while not facing one herself and serving it out. The 2025 NCAA singles champion went up a break at 2-1 in the second set, but gave it back in her next service game. Those were the only two breaks of the second set, which was at 3-all deuce when the weather caused the lengthy interruption.
Scott saved a break point serving in that 3-all game, but that was the only opportunity for either to gain an edge, and a tiebreaker would decide the set. With Brantmeier still scheduled to play the doubles final after singles, the prospect of a very late night loomed if they split sets, and Scott had a set point serving at 6-5 in the tiebreaker. But a Brantmeier forehand forced an error from Scott and, although she didn’t convert her first match point at 7-6, netting a forehand, she converted her second for a 6-4, 7-6(7) victory and a first appearance in the US Open women’s singles main draw.
Top seeds Brantmeier and Alanis Hamilton, who had won the doubles wild card at this event last year, took the court against Auburn’s DJ Bennett and Ava Esposito, the No. 2 seeds after 10:00 p.m., so I will update that score later and will be providing a detailed recap of all four finals for an upcoming article for the Tennis Recruiting Network.
Bennett and Esposito came from behind to defeat Brantmeier and Hamilton 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 in the women’s doubles final, which finished at 12:37 a.m. Bennett had lost in the final to Hamilton and Brantmeier in a third-set tiebreaker at this event last year after having served for the match.
The men’s doubles final was also on the cusp of conclusion when the weather intervened, with Ohio State’s Brandon Carpico serving at 6-2, 5-1 30-all. Carpico and partner Nikita Filin, the No. 1 seeds, were all business against Indiana’s Michael Andre and Matteo Antonescu, who had beaten them 6-3 during Big Ten play, one of their three losses, against 22 wins of the dual match season. That was a one-set no-ad format, and there was also another motivation for the Buckeyes, who were determined to erase the memory of their loss in the NCAA doubles final on the same courts last November to Virginia’s Dylan Dietrich and Mans Dahlberg.
“The loss in the fall, it sucked,” said Carpico, a redshirt sophomore, who finished off the 6-2, 6-1 victory four points later. “I don’t think either of us played particularly great in the final, so to come back to where it all kind of went wrong and to come out on top is super poetic, in a way. We’re definitely happy to have erased those demons….and it definitely gives us confidence heading into the summer.”
Filin will be returning to the main draw of the US Open in men’s doubles after winning a wild card in 2024 as the USTA Kalamazoo 18s champions, with Stanford’s Alex Razeghi.
The ITA Men’s Division I 2027 Kickoff Weekend draft was held today, with 14 hosts each welcoming three teams January 22-24 to determine who will advance to February’s ITA Men’s Team Indoor Championships. Men’s co-host South Carolina finished 15th, but of course did not need to select a site; at No. 30, Clemson also did not need to play their way into the event. So the first team to select their travel destination was 16th-ranked Stanford, who chose to go to No. 14 Illinois.
The site filling up first was No. 12 Georgia, the only site to have four Top 30 teams: UGA, No. 21 Pepperdine, No. 27 Columbia and No. 28 NC State. After Georgia, the next sites to fill were, in order, No. 10 Baylor, No. 9 Oklahoma and Illinois.
No. 1 Virginia, No. 4 TCU, No. 5 Ohio State, No. 8 LSU and No. 11 Texas A&M did not attract any Top 40 teams; many of the teams in that section of the rankings passed: Wisconsin[34], UC-Santa Barbara[36], Penn[44], Yale[45], Oklahoma State[46], Harvard[47] and Middle Tennessee[48].
The last team in was No. 81 Brigham Young, with a total of 15 teams passing on their opportunity to participate in the Team Indoor qualifying.
The complete draft can be viewed here. The women’s draft, held on Wednesday, can be viewed here.
At this week’s ITF J200 in Mason Ohio, several new faces have broken through this week, including qualifier Kahven Singh, who defeated top seed Agassi Rusher 6-4, 6-4 in today’s quarterfinals. Singh, a 16-year-old from Maryland, made the quarterfinals in the Orange Bowl 16s in December, but he has not played many ITF Junior Circuit events, hence the need to qualify. He will play No. 12 seed Mason Vaughan, who beat No. 4 seed Izyan Ahmad 6-2, 6-0. In the bottom half, Teodor Davidov, the No. 13 seed, will have No. 16 seed Kayden Colombo, after Davidov beat No. 7 seed and last week’s J100 champion Jerrid Gaines Jr. 6-3, 7-6(0) and Colombo took out unseeded Ryan Bedwick 6-2, 7-6(5).
While the boys quarterfinals were all-USA, two Canadians have advanced to the girls semifinals.
2026 ITF J300 San Diego finalist Avery Alexander of Canada, seeded No. 4, defeated No. 9 seed Allison Wang 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 and will play unseeded Reiley Rhodes, who beat top seed Olivia Traynor 7-6(1), 6-2. No. 15 seed Clemence Mercier of Canada beat No. 8 seed Isabelle DeLuccia 6-1, 6-1 and will face unseeded Anastasia Pleskun, who beat No. 2 seed Maggie Sohns 7-6(2), 6-3. The 16-year-old Pleskun, who had lost twice to Sohns in the past year, beat Mercier en route to a J100 title in Canada last September.