KEY POINTS:
No wonder organisers were beaming at the announcement of the field for the January women's classic in Auckland yesterday.
Not only have they secured a fourth top 20 player for the ASB Classic - world No 12 Jelena Jankovic, who will be top seed - but they've attracted
hugely popular Indian Sania Mirza, which should ensure healthy queues of her compatriots around the block when the tournament begins on New Year's Day.
It's the first time the US$145,000 ($216,000) event has bagged four players in the top 20. Jankovic was a quarter-finalist last year and joins 2004 French Open winner and former world No 2 Anastasia Myskina (ranked 16), defending champion Marion Bartoli (17) and pin-up Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova (18), who reached the semifinals in Auckland last January.
The expectation had been that Myskina would be top seed - until yesterday's developments, which leave her trumped by the 21-year-old Florida-based, Belgrade-born Jankovic.
"To get four, considering we're not allowed any of the top 10, we're very delighted," tournament director Richard Palmer said yesterday.
Word filters around the world's locker rooms and Auckland is known as a popular event, well organised and with a surface identical to the Australian Open, which starts a week later in Melbourne. "Players do need to play before the Australian and they have a choice of two tournaments [Auckland and Gold Coast].
"This is a vote for tournaments, as opposed to exhibitions. The players are saying 'we want to play a tournament, and it's a good one'," Palmer added.
Jankovic, who made the semifinals at the US Open in August, has not been put off by an unfortunate trip here last year. She got sick - then, after wet weather forced the quarter-finals indoors at North Harbour, she was sailing along against Bartoli, having won the first set, before falling apart in a mood to match the weather.
Palmer said Jankovic insisted she had enjoyed her time in Auckland, despite the outcome.
Mirza is, as Palmer put it, "the darling of a billion Indians", the first Indian to win a WTA tournament, at her home city Hyderabad last year.
Her ranking has slipped to No 67 but, at 20, her best years are to come.
In past years, the likes of Chile's Fernando Gonzalez and Marcelo Rios, and Brazil's Gustavo Kuerten attracted boisterous support from their countrymen on the centre court. Mirza could do the same.
Palmer has three wildcard entries to the main singles draw in his back pocket, one more than last time. Two are sure to go to Marina Erakovic and Sacha Jones, New Zealand's brightest prospects. The third could go to Leanne Baker, who has had some decent recent form behind her.
There are four qualifying singles wildcards, which most likely will also go to domestic up-and-comers, which would give the event its strongest New Zealand flavour for about 15 years.
Two unknown teenagers will be in the main draw as winners of assigned ITF feeder tournaments: Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova, 17, and 16-year-old Ayumi Morita of Japan. The field has 12 players in the top 50.
* Tickets went on sale on Monday and are well ahead of last year for both the Classic and men's Heineken Open, which starts on January 8. Nearly all the covered seating has been sold for the men's event.
Classic sales so far are second to the 2002 event, which had Russian Anna Kournikova as its drawcard.
CLASSIC FIELD
Auckland, January 1-6
Jelena Jankovic (Serbia, world No 12)
Anastasia Myskina (Russia, 16)
Marion Bartoli (France, 17)
Daniela Hantuchova (Slovakia, 18)
Vera Zvonareva (Russia, 24)
Eleni Daniliidou (Greece, 36)
Shenay Perry (US, 44)
Jamea Jackson (US, 45)
Jelena Kostanic (Croatia, 46)
Romina Oprandi (Italy, 49)
Nathalie Dechy (France, 50)
Paola Suarez (Argentina, 55)
Emilie Loit (France, 56)
Aiko Nakamura (Japan, 58)
Gisela Dulko (Argentina, 60)
Vania King (US, 61)
Kaia Kanepi (Estonia, 64)
Tsvetana Pironkova (Bulgaria, 66)
Sania Mirza (India, 67)
Virginia Ruano Pascual (Spain, 69)
Laura Granville (US, 70)
Jarmila Gajdosova (Slovakia, 71)
Ekaterina Bychkova (Russia, 72)
Also
Three wildcards, four qualifiers, two ITF feeder tournament winners, Dominika Cibulkova (Slovakia, 156) and Ayumi Morita (Japan, 184)
