Few Seeds Fall in Opening Day of USTA Winter Nationals; Basavareddy Qualifies for ATP Brisbane; Latest Tennis Mailbags

The first day of the USTA Winter National Championships is in the books, with all of the Top 5 singles seeds in all eight divisions advancing to the second round. The highest seed to lose in any division was the No. 6 seed, three of whom fell in the G14s, G16s and B18s.  Remarkably, none of the top 16 seeds lost in the B12s, G12s, or B14s.

A brief update is below; draws and results can be found for the 12s and 14s in San Antonio here; the draws and results for 16s and 18s in Orlando are here.

G14s:
1. Michelle Lee
2. Sofia Kedrin
3. Adelyn Gross
4. Anna Scott Laney
5. Olivia Lin
6. Isha Manchala (out rd 1)
7. Evelynn Kwak
8. Masha Semenova
9. Natalie Frisbie
10. London Evans
11. Blake Chang
12. Nadia Poznick
13. Hannah Halabi
14. Daniella Sales
15. Ania Zabost
16. Madeline Cleary

B16s:

1. Safir Azam

2. Theo Hegarty

3. Alexander Suhanitski

4. Artem Dmytrenko

5. Lucas Smith

6. Lixing Jiang

7. Mangus Weng

8. William McEwan

9. Maddox Bose

10. Anish Poojari

11. Gurjot Singh

12. Ilias Bouzoubaa

13. Joseph Nau

14. Rafael Lopez

15. Nicolas Pedraza (out rd 1)

16. Tristan Stratton (out rd 1)

G16s:

1. Carlota Moreno

2. Aya Manning

3. Paige Wygodski

4. Kohana Darroch

5. Anna Bugaienko

6. Whitney Burke (out rd 1)

7. Kayden Johnson

8. Sasha Miroshnichenko

9. Jensen Diianni

10. Anjani Vickneswaran

11. Alanna Ingalsbe (out rd 1)

12. Addison Lindsay

13. Maria Navarro

14. Baotong Xu

15. Lauren Nolan

16. Aarini Bhattacharya

B18s:

1. Nav Dayal

2. Prathinav Chunduru

3. Braeden Gelletich

4. Arnav Bhandari

5. Gus Grumet

6. Nolan Balthazor (out rd 1)

7. Brody Nejedly Krall

8. Blake Anderson

9. Winston Lee

10. Brennon Chow

11. Benjamin Saltman

12. Tej Bhagra (out rd 1)

13. Mark Krupkin

14. Nathan Germino (out rd 1)

15. Bryan Assi

16. Cooper Han (out rd 1)

G18s:

1. Addison Lanton

2. JoAnna Kennedy

3. Carrie-Anne Hoo

4. Bella Payne

5. Calla McGill

6. Chloe Qin

7. Ashley Kurizaki (out rd 1)

8. Nadia Valdez

9. Hi'llani Williams (out rd 1)

10. Katiana Gonzalez

11. Addison Bowman

12. Ellery Mendell

13. Blair Gill

14. Alyson Shannon

15. Katie Spencer

16. Olivia Cutone

Nishesh Basavareddy, the 19-year-old Stanford junior who turned pro earlier this month, has qualified for the ATP 250 in Brisbane Australia this week. Basvareddy, the No. 12 seed in qualifying with his ATP ranking of 138, defeated former Wake Forest star and 2018 NCAA singles finalist Borna Gojo of Croatia 4-6, 7-6(4), 6-4 in the first round of qualifying and No. 6 seed and former ATP Top 10 Lucas Pouille of France 6-4, 6-4 in the final round of qualifying Sunday. 

Basavareddy, who won the USTA's Australian Open reciprocal wild card, will now play his first ATP main draw match in Brisbane.

Jon Wertheim's weekly tennis mailbag for Sports Illustrated is a must-read for every tennis fan, but there is always room for more top tennis writers who are willing to take questions from fans. The Athletic's Matt Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare answer queries about future stars and British prospects in particular in their recent mailbag. Ben Rothenberg at his Substack newsletter Bounces posted a two-part mailbag this month. Ben answers my question in Part Two. Part One is here.