USTA Pro Circuit Australian Open Wild Card Challenge Kicks Off

The USTA announced the kickoff to the Australian Open Wild Card Challenge. The Wild Card Challenge, in its third year, will utilize the USTA Pro Circuit to award wild cards into the men’s and women’s singles main draws of the 2017 Australian Open. The wild card challenge begins this week at the W.L. Amos Sr. Tennis Classic, a $50,000 women’s event in Macon, Ga. 

In this Wild Card Challenge, the American man and American woman who earn the most ATP World Tour and WTA ranking points at two of the three select USTA Pro Circuit hard-court events this fall will earn main draw wild cards into the 2017 Australian Open. Only Americans who did not earn direct entry into the Australian Open are eligible. The USTA and Tennis Australia have a reciprocal agreement in which wild cards into the 2016 US Open and 2017 Australian Open are exchanged.

All participating tournaments will be streamed live on www.procircuit.usta.com and can also be followed on the USTA Pro Circuit app by searching “procircuit” in the app store.

The Australian Open Wild Card Challengewill consist of the following events:

$50,000 USTA Pro Circuit Women’s Events

• W.L. Amos Sr. Tennis Classic, Macon, Ga. (week of Oct. 24)

• Copperwynd Pro Women’s Challenge, Scottsdale, Ariz. (week of Oct. 31)

• Bush’s $50,000 Waco Showdown, Waco, Texas (week of Nov. 7)

$50,000 USTA Pro Circuit Men’s Events

• Charlottesville Men’s Pro Challenger, Charlottesville, Va. (week of Oct. 31)

• Knoxville 2016 Challenger, Knoxville, Tenn. (week of Nov. 7)

• JSM Challenger of Champaign-Urbana, Champaign, Ill. (week of Nov. 14)

The USTA first used this wild card format in 2012 to award wild cards into the French Open and US Open and has been doing so ever since. Last year, young Americans Noah Rubin and Samantha Crawford earned wild cards into the Australian Open by winning the wild card challenge. This year, former top junior players Taylor Townsend and Bjorn Fratangelo each won the USTA Pro Circuit Wild Card Challenge for wild cards into the French Open, and Sofia Kenin and Ernesto Escobedo earned US Open wild cards by winning the US Open Wild Card Challenge this summer. 

The 2017 Australian Open main draw will be held Monday, Jan. 16, to Sunday, Jan. 29.

Information on the USTA Pro Circuit’s Australian Open Wild Card Challenge will be available at www.procircuit.usta.com and on Twitter through @USTAProCircuit.

The USTA is the national governing body for the sport of tennis in the U.S. and the leader in promoting and developing the growth of tennis at every level -- from local communities to the highest level of the professional game. A not-for-profit organization with more than 715,000 members, it invests 100% of its proceeds in growing the game. It owns and operates the US Open, the highest-attended annual sporting event in the world, and launched the Emirates Airline US Open Series, linking seven summer tournaments to the US Open. In addition, it owns approximately 90 Pro Circuit events throughout the U.S. and selects the teams for the Davis Cup, Fed Cup, Olympic and Paralympic Games. The USTA’s philanthropic entity, the USTA Foundation, provides grants and scholarships and helps under-resourced youth and individuals with disabilities, and supports  wounded, ill and injured service members, veterans and their families. For more information on the USTA, log on to usta.com, “like” the official Facebook page, facebook.com/usta, or follow @usta on Twitter.