The field for the Tallahassee Tennis Challenger was announced Thursday morning by tournament director Karen Vogter, as two former champions and nine players inside the top 150 will make the trip to the $50,000  event, the last stop on the Har-Tru USTA Pro Circuit Wild Card Challenge, where players compete for a spot at the French Open.

“We have players from 13 countries thus far and two former winners in Tim Smyczek (2012) and Donald Young (2011) as well as past finalists Frank Dancevic (2012), Bobby Reynolds (2008) and Young (2009),” Vogter said. “About half of the players we have never hosted before which is exciting, and then we have a collection of guys we know and love from years past.”

Young (No. 91) and veteran Michael Russell (No. 97) are the two players inside the top 100 on the entry list. World No. 124 Alex Kuznetsov will return to Tallahassee a year after he sealed the Har-Tru USTA Pro Circuit Wild Card into Roland Garross with a quarterfinal appearance at Forestmeadows.

In 2013, the tournament made a switch from hard courts to Har-Tru green clay, making it the final stop of the Challenge and joining forces with other USTA Pro Circuit events in Sarasota and Savannah. In the Challenge, the American with the best two finishes in three events earns the U. S. wild card into the French Open.

“I am just hoping for a week of great tennis with less rain than last year,” Vogter said, referring to the delays and cancellations from the 2013 tournament. “I feel it was hard for fans to really get to see and feel the new clay tournament due to the weather. We are looking at a good forecast right now, however.”

The Tallahassee Tennis Challenger is a $50,000  event on the USTA Pro Circuit, April 26-May 3 at the Forestmeadows Tennis Complex. Players such as Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Mardy Fish, James Blake, John Isner and Ryan Harrison have appeared at the event, which benefits the D. Mark Vogter, M. D., Memorial Endowment for the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare