Rubin, Townsend Win USTA French Open Wild Cards in Roland Garros Challenge

Taylor Townsend

Former American world No. 1 junior Taylor Townsend will make her third appearance in the French Open main draw via the USTA Roland Garros Wild Card Challenge, and American Noah Rubin will make his first appearance after the challenge was completed last week.

Townsend also won the USTA Roland Garros Wild Card Challenge in 2016 and 2014, and it will be her overall fifth career appearance in Paris.

The 22-year-old Rubin, from Long Island, clinched his wild card by winning the Tallahassee Challenger event in Florida, and picking up points in qualifying at the ATP Morocco event.

Townsend, also 22 from Atlanta, won USTA Pro Circuit singles titles in Dothan, Ala., and Charleston, S.C.

Last year the challenge helped launch the careers of winners Amanda Anisimova and Tennys Sandgren. Florida’s Anisimova won last year’s challenge at the tender age of 15, then later in the year won the US Open girls’ title. This year she reached the semifinals at the Indian Wells $125K event, then the following week at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells beat No. 23 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and No. 9 seed and former Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova en route to the fourth round. Sandgren broke out this year at the Australian Open, reaching the quarterfinals with wins over No. 5-ranked Dominic Thiem and No. 8 Stan Wawrinka.

Noah and Townsend were the top point-earners from their two best results at a series of USTA Pro Circuit events for the women, and pro circuit and tour events for the men. The USTA and the French Tennis Federation have a reciprocal agreement in which wild cards into the French Open and US Open are exchanged.

Past men’s and women’s USTA Roland Garros
Wild Card Challenge winners:

2018 — Noah Rubin, Taylor Townsend
2017 — Tennys Sandgren, Amanda Anisimova
2016 — Bjorn Fratengelo, Taylor Townsend
2015 — Frances Tiafoe, Louisa Chirico
2014 — Robby Ginepri, Taylor Townsend
2013 — Alex Kuznetsov, Shelby Rogers
2012 — Brian Baker, Melanie Oudin

For more info go to www.usta.com/news.