KEY POINTS:
Six current or former top 10 players will play January's Heineken Open.
The field includes seven players currently ranked in the top 30, two Grand Slam winners and three past champions.
All eight seeds are likely to seeded in the first Grand Slam of the year in Australia the following week.
Spanish defending champion David Ferrer, the world No 5, heads a field high on Latin influence.
The top five seeds and six of the eight in total are from either Spain or Argentina.
The second-ranked player will be Argentine Guillermo Canas, the world No 15, followed by countryman Juan Ignacio Chela, who is currently ranked 20.
There are four more players ranked between 20 and 30 with another Argentine, Juan Monaco at 23, then 2003 Roland Garros winner and former world No1 Juan Carlos Ferrero at 24.
Finland's Jarkko Nieminen is at 27 and Spaniard Nicolas Almagro 28.
The likely eighth seed will be Italian Potito Starace at 31 who is joined on that ranking by Xavier Malisse from Belgium, who is entering on a protected ranking. Another notable entry is 2002 Australian Open winner Thomas Johansson of Sweden, who last played in New Zealand in 2001 where he reached the quarter-finals.
The 32-year-old has been ranked as high as No 7 in the world and has nine career singles titles to his credit.
Another Swedish veteran who has a history in Auckland is Jonas Bjorkman. At 35 he is the oldest in the top 100. The other former winner is popular Nieminen who won the title in 2006 and is a two-time Grand Slam quarter-finalist.
Twenty-year-old American Sam Querry is one of the rising stars on the ATP Tour and is one of the new young power-hitters, standing at 1.98m. His best result came at the Masters Series event at Cincinnati where he beat Juan Monaco and top 10 player Mikail Youzhny.
Tournament director Graham Pearce said he was thrilled at the quality of the field he had assembled.
The cutoff for the 23 direct entries is Argentine Jose Acasuso at 65 meaning players such as Andrei Pavel, Nicolas Massu and Vice Spadea will have to go through qualifying to make the main draw.
