By Terry Maddaford
New Zealand tennis No 1 Mark Nielsen is certain to be among the top eight seeds for this month's Challenger tournament in Hamilton.
Based on rankings 21 days out from the $50,000 tournament, to be played at the refurbished Waikato Tennis Centre, Nielsen, ranked 224th in the world, will
be the seventh seed behind top seed Goichi Motomura, of Japan, who is ranked 145th.
Australian Dejan Petrovic, ranked 187th, will be seeded second ahead of Korean Hyung-Taik Lee, who is also in the world's top 200.
Four other New Zealand players will be given wildcards into the March 20 to 26 event. They are likely to go to James Greenhalgh, Teo Susnjak, Simon Rea, Lee Radovanovich or Mark Thompson.
James Shortall and Alistair Hunt, who joined Nielsen and Greenhalgh in New Zealand's successful Davis Cup tie against Thailand last month, are in the United States and will not return for the event.
They are, however, likely to be included in the Davis Cup team to play Uzbekistan in Tashkent early next month.
Meanwhile, some of the world's best young players are in Auckland for a tournament at the Eden Epsom Club.
It is the biggest tournament at the central Auckland club since 1920, when "Big Bill" Tilden won the men's singles at the New Zealand championships.
The junior event is open to players under 16 and is being held for the first time.
Four-strong teams, two boys and two girls, from Australia, New Zealand, North Asia (Japan, China) and South Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand) will play the Would Council of International Lawn Tennis Clubs-sanctioned tournament.
The New Zealanders are Damien Mulhane (Auckland), Paul Ambrose (Christchurch), Eden Marama (Auckland) and Paula Marama (Auckland). In first day action today, Australia meet South Asia and New Zealand meet North Asia.
