ATP Tour

17-year-old Kouame among #NextGenATP trio to receive Miami wild card

The milestones keep on coming for Moise Kouame in 2026.

The Frenchman is set to make his ATP Masters 1000 main-draw debut later this month after he was awarded a wild card for the upcoming Miami Open presented by Itau.

Kouame, who only turned 17 on 6 March, began his year by lifting his first two titles on the ITF World Tennis Tour in his homeland. He followed those successes by coming through qualifying to make his ATP Tour main-draw debut at the Open Occitanie in Montpellier, where he pushed Top 100 star Aleksandar Kovacevic to three sets. Now the Paris native will make his Masters 1000 debut at Hard Rock Stadium.

Kouame is not the only #NextGenATP star to receive a Miami wild card. The 19-year-old Japanese Rei Sakamoto, who came through qualifying to earn his Masters 1000 main-draw debut in Miami in 2025, has been awarded a spot in this year's main draw.

Home fans will also be keen to check on the progress of 18-year-old Darwin Blanch. The American played two Masters 1000s, starting with Miami, as a 16-year-old in 2024. The other Masters 1000 he played was Madrid, where he faced off against ATP Tour icon Rafael Nadal.

Two other players, 22-year-old American Martin Damm and Chinese star Wu Yibing, were announced as main-draw wild cards for the men’s singles in Miami. Meanwhile the wild cards for the women’s singles draw are headlined by home favourites and former Grand Slam champions Venus Williams and Sloane Stephens. Williams and Stephens’ fellow Americans Taylor Townsend, Jennifer Brady and Ashlyn Krueger also received wild cards, as did Austria’s Lilli Tagger, Australia’s Emerson Jones and Czechia’s Darja Vidmanova.