By IANS
Chennai : World No.2 Rafael Nadal of Spain will head the field in the $436,000 13th Chennai Open ATP tennis tournament for men to be held at the SDAT Stadium here from Dec 31 to Jan 6.
Also in the fray are three other Top-20 players — No.16 Marcos Baghdatis (Cyprus), the 2006 Australian Open runner-up, No.17 Carlos Moya (Spain), the twice Chennai Open champion and Mikhail Youzhny (Russia), who incidentally will making his first appearance at this tournament.
Completing the line-up is Belgium’s Xavier Malisse who achieved a rare double in 2007 by winning both singles and doubles titles. Malisse, who is currently ranked No.109, is on the comeback trail after an injury-plagued season.
This was part of the list of confirmed entries that also includes three wild cards besides four qualifiers.
The qualifying tournament will be held a couple of days before the main event that will kick-start the 2008 season.
The list of confirmed players:
Rafael Nadal (Spain, No.2), Marcos Baghdatis (Cyprus, 16), Carlos Moya (Spain, 17), Mikhail Youzhny (Russia, 19), Xavier Malisse (Belgium, 109), Nicholas Mahut (France, 45), Jurgen Melzer (Austria, 60), Werner Eschauer (Germany, 65), Marc Gicquel (France, 70), Marin Cilic (Croatia, 71), Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Spain, 90), Florent Serra (France, 94), Edouard Roger-Vasselin (France, 96), Kristof Vliegen (Belgium, 97), Jiri Vanek (Czechoslovakia, 99), Paul Capdeville (Chile, 100), Olivier Patience (France, 105), Robin Haase (Netherlands, 112), Ivan Navarro (Spain, 114), Gilles Muller (Luxembourg, 115), Mathieu Montcourt (France, 116), Denis Gremelmayr (Germany, 118) and Yuri Schukin (Russia, 119).
There will be three wild cards and four qualifiers.