Tennis: Hoping to serve up a top tenner

Rafael Nadal

Auckland tennis officials are quietly confident of putting out a high-calibre field for their flagship men's tournament in January.

This year's Heineken Open attracted a cluster of players now in the world top 20. The aim is to attract at least two players in the top 20 and Auckland Tennis chief executive Graham Pearce is happy with progress for the event, which starts on January 8.

"If you go down the top 20 list, we've seen a lot of them in Auckland, from Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal down," he said.

"We're getting good players through and that's our intention again and we're trucking along okay right now."

Undisputed world No 1 Federer was a first-round loser in 2000, beaten 6-4, 6-4 by Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero; Nadal has visited twice, beaten in the 2004 final by Dominik Hrbaty, then retiring hurt a set down in the first round, again to Hrbaty, last year.

Defending champion, world No 16 Finn Jarkko Niemenen, is also a target and Pearce does not rule out pulling in one of the game's big names.

Players in that rarified top 10 echelon include Argentine David Nalbandian, American Andy Roddick, Spaniard Tommy Robredo, popular Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis, who lost in the first round to Niemenen this year, Russian Nikolay Davydenko and Croatian Ivan Ljubicic.

"The rankings will change between now and the end of the year. We hope to get maybe a top tenner. We're still in business on that," Pearce said.

The Open clashes with the Sydney Classic and an exhibition event in Melbourne and takes place the week before the Australian Open.

Several leading players will be committed to Sydney or Melbourne and some prefer a break the week before a grand slam event.

One player unlikely to be here is world No 2 Nadal but Pearce believes there's a good chance the popular Spanish lefthander will return in the future.

He said players evaluated several factors in deciding which tournament to contest before a major.

The week before Auckland, players will be spread between Doha, Mumbai, Adelaide and Perth for the Hopman Cup.

Prizemoney is up to US$390,000 ($588,000) of a total US$415,000 commitment, with the winner's purse up from US$59,250 to about US$70,000.

The tournament launch is on November 8 with the field due to be disclosed about November 29.