More Top Players For Heineken Open

MEDIA RELEASE
27 November, 2001

More Top Players For Heineken Open

The Heineken Open 2002 featuring the Vodafone singles and doubles looks set to have the best depth of players ever with at least ten players ranked inside the top 50 end-of-year race ranking's.

Tournament Director Graham Pearce said," It looks likely that all eight seeded players on the preliminary entry list will be inside the top 36 players in the world. This represents the lowest cut off for seeded players in our ATP tournament's history. We could not have hoped for a better field with any main draw player capable of winning the event. Last years finalist Francisco Clavet along with 2000 Heineken Open finalist Michael Chang are unlikely to be seeded."

The latest player to confirm his entry for the Heineken Open scheduled for 5-12 January 2002 is American Jan-Michael Gambill who has finished the year at 21st in the world.

Gambill, 24, has played in Auckland on three previous occasions, making the quarterfinals this year after being in the second round in 2000 and the quarterfinals in 1997.

In the early stages of 2001 Gambill had a huge run of success reaching the quarterfinals of consecutive tournaments at Memphis. The semifinals of San Jose (bt Andy Roddick), won Delray Beach, quarterfinals of the Tennis Masters Series event at Indian Wells (bt Gustavo Kuerten) and finals of the Tennis Masters Series at Miami (bt Lleyton Hewitt).

The popular American was also a quarterfinalist at four other events during the year.

Expected to join Gambill in Auckland is Frenchman Jerome Golmard who is ranked at 49th and reached the final in Umag, three semifinals and one quarterfinal.

Also confirmed is 1996 Heineken Open winner, Jiri Novak who won two events in 2001 - Munich and Gstaad and was a semifinalist at Stuttgart as well as making the quarterfinals of Moscow and the Tennis Masters Series event in Paris.

At present the eight seeded players are expected to line up as follows;

1 Marat Safin (Russia) 11

2 Goran Ivanisevic (Croatia) 13

3 Jan-Michael Gambill (USA) 21

4 Sjeng Schalken (Netherlands) 26

5 Greg Rusedski (Great Britain) 29

6 Jiri Novak (Czech Republic) 32

7 Andreas Vinciquerra (Sweden) 33

8 Dominik Hrbaty (Slovakia) 36

The Heineken Open featuring the Vodafone singles and doubles will be held at the ASB BANK Tennis Centre in Auckland from January 7-12, 2002.

For more information please contact:

Graham Pearce

Heineken Open Tournament Director

3733 623 or mobile 021 675 005

Or Dave Worsley - Media Manager

021 679 096

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