Florida’s Fratangelo Wins French Open Tennis Wild Card

Boca Raton-based Bjorn Fratangelo will make his French Open main draw debut after earning a main draw wild card into the French Open by winning the 2016 USTA Pro Circuit Roland Garros Wild Card Challenge.

The 22-year-old Fratangelo, who won the 2011 French Open junior singles title, clinched the wild card Tuesday after Jared Donaldson, the only player who could surpass him in the challenge standings, lost his first-round match at the $50,000 USTA Tallahassee Tennis Challenger.

Fratangelo last Sunday won the $50,000 St. Joseph’s/Candler Savannah Challenger in Savannah, Ga., and reached the semifinals of the $100,000 Joey Gratton Sarasota Open in Sarasota, Fla., two weeks ago.

USTA Player Development awards a French Open main draw wild card to one American man and one American woman who earn the most ATP World Tour and WTA Tour ranking points in a series of USTA Pro Circuit clay court events this spring. The USTA and the French Tennis Federation have a reciprocal agreement in which wild cards into the 2016 French Open and US Open are exchanged.

Fratangelo qualified for the 2016 Australian Open for his first appearance in a Grand Slam main draw outside of the US Open. He made his Grand Slam main draw debut at the 2015 US Open after winning the USTA Pro Circuit’s US Open Wild Card Challenge last summer.

He has won 10 USTA Pro Circuit and ITF Circuit singles titles over the last three years. This year he qualified for the ATP events in Indian Wells and Miami. In Indian Wells, he won his first-round match and pushed world No. 1 Novak Djokovic to three sets in the second round.

Live streaming, wild card challenge standings, and additional information on the USTA Pro Circuit Wild Card Challenge can be found at www.procircuit.usta.com.