The New Zealand tennis number one Marina Erakovic makes the main draw at Auckland's ASB Classic for the first time, seeded 13th and with a world ranking of 60.
Tournament director Brenda Perry says it's the first time a New Zealand player's done that in about 17 years, so it's a real bonus.
And as well as having four players in the top 20 - Russian's Elena Dementieva and Nadia Petrova, Denmark's Caroline Wozniack and Katarina Srebotnik from Slovenia --- the tournament also features a first appearance for Nicole Vaidisova.
The teenage Czech is the eighth seed and has a current ranking of 41 but Perry says she's been as high as seven after winning three tournaments in consecutive weeks when she was 17 so it's easy to forget she's still only 19.
Perry says the field includes five talented teenagers, the youngest of them the 17-year-old Russian former junior number one Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
