All No. 1 Seeds Advance to Round of 16 at USTA Winter National Championships; Indian Wells ITF J300 Moves to Tucson in 2026; A Look at Online Schooling for Junior Tennis Players

The No. 1 seeds continued to advance at the USTA Winter National Championships, with all eight top seeds reaching Wednesday's round of 16.

Boys 18s No. 1 seed and defending champion Shaan Patel will face No. 17 seed Siddharth Bharadwaj and No. 2 seed Ronit Karki will play No. 17 seed John Gentek.

Daniel Malacek, the top seed in the boys 16s, will play No. 13 seed Joshua Dolinsky.

Girls 18s No. 1 seed Carlota Moreno will play last year's 16s champion Paige Wygodzki, who is unseeded this year in the 18s. 

In the girls 16s, top seed Sylvana Jalbert will face Ella Lin, a 17 seed, while No. 2 seed Shristi Selvan plays unseeded Audrey Dussault.

Another intriguing round of 16 match in the girls 16s features two IMG Academy champions, with 2024 12s champion Nikol Davletshina, the No. 5 seed, taking on 2025 16s champion Adelina Iftime, who is unseeded this week.

In the girls 14s, top seed Ava Chua plays unseeded Zhongyi  Zhou and No. 2 seed Eleanor Armistead faces No. 13 seed Natalia Martinez.

Girls 12s No. 1 seed Anna Sandru plays No. 13 seed Lucy Jiang and No. 2 seed Mary Podkhyneychenko faces No. 14 seed Audrey Yang.

In the boys 12s, No. 1 seed Dmitriy Flyam plays No. 14 seed Jesse Goldman for a spot in the quarterfinals, while No. 2 seed William Zhang takes on No. 12 seed Zephyr Zwicker.

In the boys 14s, top seed Sebastian Zavala plays unseeded Nathan Lee and No. 2 seed Jiarui Zhang faces unseeded Jerry Qi.

Although all the top seeds remain in singles, the No. 1 seed in the boys 18s doubles draw lost today in the second round, with Rowan Qalbani and Ilias Bouzoubaa beating top seeds Austin He and John Gentek 6-4, 6-3.

The draws for the 16s and 18s in Lake Nona are here; the draws for the 12s and 14s in San Antonio are here.

When FILA ended their sponsorship agreement with the BNP Paribas Open, there was no reason to think they would continue to sponsor the ITF J300 that was played in Indian Wells the second week of the Masters 1000 there. When that became clear this fall, the USTA began looking for an alternative for that event, which had been held in Indian Wells in 2023, 2024 and 2025. I learned at the Orange Bowl that the new venue will be the Tucson Racquet Club in Arizona, and it is now listed on the ITF Junior Calendar. The tournament, with 48-player draws and running from March 9-14, will be followed by the San Diego J300 North American Regional, beginning March 16. 

The Las Vegas ITF event that usually precedes these two events is not yet appearing on the ITF calendar, but I've been told this will be a J200 event this year.

The downside to the 2026 first quarter calendar is that the ITF has moved the J300 and J500 in Brazil from late February/early March to the same two weeks that the J300s are in the United States. 

I'll have an article for the Tennis Recruiting Network next month on the USTA's commitment in 2026 to increasing opportunities for American juniors by expanding the number of ITF Junior Circuit tournament in the United States.

Online schooling has been popular with top juniors for as long as I've been covering the sport, which is two decades and counting now, and that shows no signs of slowing down. This article, which first appeared in The Guardian, looks at the trend and what it might mean for the athletic, academic and social development of young tennis players.