Williams, Johnson, Levine, Reynolds & Kosakowski Complete USTA Australian Open Wild Card Field; Mitchell Frank Feature

The USTA has released the names of the five American men invited to participate in its Australian Open wild card tournament next week at the Racquet Club of the South. Joining the previously announced trio of Jack Sock, Denis Kudla and Robby Ginepri are Bobby Reynolds, Jesse Levine, Steve Johnson, Rhyne Williams and Dan Kosakowski.

Unlike the women's event, which does not have any current or former college players among their eight participants, the five just named all have played college tennis. Dan Kosakowski, who turned pro in May after his first season at at UCLA, Rhyne Williams, the NCAA finalist from Tennessee who turned pro in July after his sophomore season, Jesse Levine, who played one semester for Florida in 2007 and Bobby Reynolds, who played three years for Vanderbilt in the early 2000s, join current USC Trojan Johnson in the field.

I'm a little surprised not to see All-American and Indoor champion Mitchell Frank of Virginia among the contestants, but he did get an opportunity to play in the US Open wild card tournament last August, so I'm presuming he couldn't commit to leaving school for that amount of time should he win the wild card.

Speaking of Frank, Scoop Malinowski did a feature on the 19-year-old freshman, and it's full of interesting accounts of some of Frank's most memorable matches.

In anticipation of Thanksgiving tomorrow (and I will be posting, early, with a look at the quarterfinalists at the Yucatan Grade 1 and a link to my Eddie Herr preview), Sports Illustrated gathered some of its tennis writers to give thanks, as it related to the sport. They came up with some excellent responses, including an entire entry on 10-and-under-tennis.