There are few things Americans love more than a single-elimination knockout tournament.

March Madness. The NFL playoffs. The Indiana High School Athletic Association basketball tournaments. All are beloved institutions.

The U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) loves them so much that in 2025, it decided to have not one, but two. American winners of the NCAA tennis singles competitions have long received a wild card entry into the U.S. Open. But the 2024 finals took place that November, at which point the 2025 U.S. Open felt really far away. So Michael Zheng of Columbia, the men’s singles champion, this week found himself in another single-elimination playoff for a wild card he might have already won.

He came up a match short, losing to Wake Forest’s Stefan Dostanic — who did not play in the NCAA event — 6-3, 6-4.

“I told him I know it sucks,” Dostanic said of their exchange at the handshake between two friendly rivals.

“I got a lot of love for him. It sucks that only one of us can get the wild card. That’s sports.”

Zheng left the site shortly after what figured to be one of the tougher days of his tennis life. This year, after qualifying for three of the past four Grand Slams, he has received a wild card straight into the U.S. Open main draw for his exploits on the ATP Tour.

All this sounds pretty fair — better to have people compete for a coveted spot in a Grand Slam main draw and the $100,000 that goes with it, rather than have a bunch of men and women in blazers dole them out. But the strategic cocktail of soft nationalism, corporate politics and ticket-sales boosterism that constitutes the wild card system more often overshadows sporting fairness.

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There are wild card entries at just about every ATP and WTA tournament. Smaller events might use them to attract star names who have exited a bigger tournament early and need some match reps. They get practice; the tournament, hopefully, gets to sell more tickets. Wild cards announced further in advance can attract sponsors. This season, whether or not the Williams sisters will receive one — either individually for singles, or together for doubles — has been a key storyline.

Venus, 46, has one for the upcoming U.S. Open, despite a 0-13 record in singles since this time last year. Serena, 44, is yet to be allocated one, but she is in contention.

Companies that own tournaments and also represent players — in the past, IMG was an example — will use them to give their up-and-coming stars the exposure that can lead to lucrative deals. But it’s at Wimbledon, and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, where the arbitrariness that the wild card system originally carried is most dimmed.

In the prehistoric days of tennis roughly 60 years ago, tournament directors filled their draws with whatever players they wanted. They all tried to get the players who were winning and doing well at other tournaments, but after that, they would recruit and accept the players they knew, or had heard good things about.

That all went out the window with the computerized rankings systems that sought to rid the sport of favoritism. The advent of rankings allowed players to earn their way into tournaments, but the owners and directors still held onto a handful of slots for their favorites, which became known as wild cards. As tennis has grown and the four Grand Slams — and their respective national tennis federations — have grown more powerful with it, that favoritism has evolved into something far less wild and far more predictable.

To followers of other sports, it feels strange. Should Manchester United get a spot in the Champions League because they are arguably the world’s most popular team and they used to win a lot of titles, even though they could not qualify on merit? Should a college football team make the College Football Playoff because the sport’s leaders see them as an up-and-coming team that could use some extra cash, exposure and experience?

The Masters invites old champions to participate. The host of the soccer World Cup automatically qualifies, and Olympic host countries automatically get spots in every event. But the World Cup and the Olympics move every four years.

And yet, wild cards and home-country favoritism remain pro forma in tennis, even though at every tournament there are plenty of players, ranked far higher than the people awarded special entry, who are on the outside looking in.

At the Grand Slams, which have 128 entrants in the men’s and women’s singles fields, wild cards usually take up six percent of the entries. The USTA, Tennis Australia and France’s tennis federation, the FFT, have a reciprocal agreement, with each country allowing the other two to fill one of the wild cards with a player of their choosing.

Like the U.S., the other Grand Slam host countries mostly reserve their remaining wild cards for their own players. That works out great for players from the U.S., France, Australia or Great Britain. It’s not so good for anyone from one of the other 209 countries that make up the International Tennis Federation.

The Australians do provide a men’s and women’s singles berth for a player from the Asia-Pacific region, to foster development in less traditional tennis countries. An AELTC spokesperson said that the tournament committee considers “ranking, results, and current form; success at lead-in grass court tournaments and previously at the Championships; support for British players; and any other special circumstances that warrant consideration.”

Sometimes those special circumstances go against national pride: there have been fallow years for British tennis in which the club has decided not to award all the wild cards, instead giving the spots to the players ranked just outside the cutoff for entry.

More often than not, wild cards do not fare particularly well in the main draws, though there are exceptions. Kim Clijsters, a former world No. 1, received a wild card into the 2009 U.S. Open. It was her second tournament back during her comeback from a two-year hiatus, during which she had her first child. She won the tournament. Goran Ivanišević won Wimbledon as a wild card in 2001.

Loïs Boisson’s stunning run to the last four of the French Open came from a wild card entry. (Julian Finney / Getty Images)

But Ivanišević and Clijsters were proven veterans. Unproven wild cards have a far more limited history of success, despite very recent evidence to the contrary. At the 2025 French Open, Loïs Boisson rode her wild card all the way to the semifinals, beating two top-10 players along the way. It was a magical run for a player who had won just one WTA Tour match ahead of her Grand Slam debut in Paris, but Boisson had also proven herself — just a year earlier.

After tearing through the third rung of professional women’s tennis in 2024, the FFT awarded Boisson a wild card for that year’s French Open. While playing at a minor tournament in Paris a week before the event, Boisson tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee and missed nine months of tennis. She didn’t even watch Roland Garros on television. Then she came back and became the tournament’s biggest star.

It’s impossible to say how her results, and those of everyone else who gets a wild card, would stack up against other, higher-ranked players who didn’t gain automatic entry. Plenty of them lose in the qualifying tournament, just as the wild cards might have, and don’t get a chance to prove their worth in the main draw.

What isn’t debatable is that higher-ranked players who just miss the cut for the main draws have achieved more on the court during the previous year than the wild cards ranked lower than them who receive automatic entry, and with it the prize money that comes from a first-round appearance. For Zheng, this time around, at least he doesn’t have to worry about that.