KEY POINTS:
The familiar and the fresh faces of Spanish tennis will be on show in Auckland in January.
World No 7 Tommy Robredo is likely to be top seed at the Heineken Open on his second trip to Auckland, Grand Slam winner Juan Carlos Ferrero, the world No 23, is returning for his third visit and yesterday up-and-comer Nicolas Almagro was confirmed in the field for Auckland.
Almagro, 1.82m and world No 32, is a 21-year-old who won his first ATP title when he beat Frenchman Gilles Simon at Valencia in April.
Almagro also reached three semifinals this year and is tipped among the bright future talents.
This year, he climbed 70 places in the rankings.
"Each year we try to find players considered on the way up in the tennis world," tournament director Graham Pearce said yesterday.
"We've had Rafael Nadal, Marcos Baghdatis and Roger Federer. We think Almagro is in that mould. He's an exciting player."
Spain possess perhaps the greatest depth in men's tennis.
There are seven Spaniards in the world's top 50 - Rafael Nadal (No 2), Robredo, David Ferrer (14), Ferrero, Almagro, Fernando Verdasco (35) and Carlos Moya (43) - and 12 in the top 100.
Six Spaniards turned up for last year's Open, and five, Robredo, Ferrero, Nadal, David Sanchez and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, were gone in the first round, Alberto Martin in the second. The armada was sunk almost before setting sail.
No Spaniard has won the Open title. The last 10 winners look like a United Nations round table.
Since 1997, those winners came from Sweden (Jonas Bjorkman), Chile (Marcelo Rios), the Netherlands (Sjeng Schalken), Sweden again (Magnus Norman), Slovakia (Dominik Hrbaty), Britain (Greg Rusedski), Brazil (Gustavo Kuerten), Slovakia again (Hrbaty again), Chile again (Fernando Gonzalez) and this year Finland (Jarkko Nieminen).
The top seeds for January's Open are Robredo, Croatian Mario Ancic (No 9), defending champion Nieminen (No 15) and Ferrero.
Of the world's top 20, seven have confirmed to play the Kooyong exhibition event and five the Medibank International in Sydney in the same week as the Auckland tournament.
Three will be in Auckland and five -Russian No 3 Nikolay Davydenko, Frenchman Richard Gasquet, Ferrer, Serbian Novak Djokovic and Gonzalez - are yet to confirm their movements.
Men's Open
ASB Tennis Centre
January 8-13
