KEY POINTS:
Marina Erakovic and Sacha Jones will carry New Zealand singles hopes at next month's women's Classic after being handed wildcards into the main draw.
Yesterday's call to give the brightest stars in the game here their chance to test themselves against the best was expected but not confirmed until tournament director Richard Palmer had considered all likely entries. Erakovic and Jones could be joined by a third local player before the draw is made on December 29.
Erakovic, 19, and ranked 165th in the world, has the chance to go further than she did at the ASB Classic earlier this year when she beat former winner Meilen Tu in the first round and took another former champion Eleni Daniilidou to three sets before bowing out one victory shy of reaching the quarter-finals.
Jones, 17, is ranked 323rd and will almost certainly be the lowest-rated player in the 32-strong main draw.
The young New Zealanders are in good teenage company.
Austrian Tamira Paszek, 16, has a career-high ranking of 41 and, as a qualifier, at 15 years and nine months, won a WTA tournament in Slovenia.
She is joined by another young first-timer in Auckland, 18-year-old Michaella Krajicek (Netherlands) who comes in ranked 33rd in the world. The two "feed-up" winners into the main draw for the Sovereign singles are Sofia Arvidsson (Sweden) who won a challenger tournament in France and Belgium's Yanina Wickmayer who won in Taipei.
China's Zi Yan, Aiko Nakamua (Japan) and Frenchwoman Nathalie Dechy (France) and Spaniard Lourdes Dominquez Lino are late withdrawals from the Classic. They have been replaced by talented 20-year-old Aravane Rezei (France) ranked 73rd, Camille Pin (also France) and ranked 76 and Russian Anastasia Rodionova who is one place lower on the WTA list.
Rezai has turned in some useful results this year including a strong run at the Tier 111 tournament in Istanbul where she despatched Venus Williams in the second round then former top-20 player Meghann Shaughnessy and world No 2 Maria Sharapova in the semifinals before retiring midway through her final with Elena Dementieva.
Australian veteran Nicole Pratt is returning for the first time since the mid-1990s. Ranked at 70, Pratt has, in recent years, opted for her home tournament on the Gold Coast as her season starting point but has decided to play at the ASB Tennis Centre in one of her last WTA tournaments before retiring.
