My Orange Bowl Recap; USTA's Australian Open Wild Card Tournament Begins Today

My review of Francis Tiafoe's history-making title and Varvara Flink's comeback win at the Orange Bowl is available today at the Tennis Recruiting Network.

The annual USTA wild card tournament for the Australian Open begins today outside Atlanta, with eight men and eight women playing for the wild card the USTA receives in exchange for a similar one it extends to Tennis Australia for the US Open.  The women participating, with seeds in parentheses, are: Shelby Rogers(1), Madison Brengle(2), Grace Min(3), Vicky Duval(4), Sanaz Marand, Maria Sanchez, Nicole Gibbs and Sachia Vickery.

The men's participants: Denis Kudla(1), Rhyne Williams(2), Steve Johnson(3), Tennys Sandgren(4), Jamere Jenkins, Austin Krajicek, Bjorn Fratangelo and Chase Buchanan.

With the popularity of the USTA's new system to decide the French Open wild card and one of their US Open wild cards (which uses results in Pro Circuit challengers over a series of weeks), this could be the last such tournament for the Australian Open wild card.

For extensive onsite coverage of the event, see the Tennis East Coast blog.