A few changes to flights for 2017 USTA League Nationals, a wildcard can make the semis

As we get closer to Nationals, and they are less than a month away now, there can be a few tweaks to the flight make-up for Nationals.  This generally occurs if a section elects to not send a team for a given division/age/level/gender.

For example, the 40 & over 3.0 men now has 15 teams rather than the 17 for each section, it appears Southwest and Hawaii are not sending teams.  As a result, there will now be three flights of five teams each and thus each team will get a minimum four matches rather than most having just three like is the case with four flights.

However, this also means that there will be a wildcard that makes the semis to join the three flight winners.  In the past when this has happened, the criteria for what second place team advances has been percentage of games won so I expect that will be the case again but have not had that confirmed yet.

A few other championships won't have the full 17 teams.  The complete list so far:

• 18+ 2.5 women - 15 teams (Hawaii and Southern Cal missing)
• 18+ 3.0 men - 16 teams (Hawaii missing)
• 18+ 4.5 women - 15 teams (Hawaii and Northern missing)
• 18+ 4.5 men - 16 teams (Hawaii missing)
• 40+ 3.0 men - 15 teams (Hawaii and Southwest missing)

I have updated my post with the schedule and links to PDFs with what we know as of today and will continue to update it as I can.  Note that in at least one case, the match schedule links on the USTA site are broken but my link is still good :)