Chennai: World No. 5 Nikolay Davydenko of Russia will head a strong field in the $450,000 ATP Chennai Open Tennis tournament to be held here from Jan 5-11.
Davydenko who ended the year on a high, reaching the finals of the Masters in Shanghai, is joined by World No. 13 Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland, who won the 2008 Beijing Olympics Gold medal in doubles partnering Roger Federer.
Also in the draw are: World No. 23 Marin Cilic (Croatia), Ivo Karlovic (Croatia, No.26), Wimbledon semi-finalist Rainer Schuettler (Germany, No.33), former Chennai Open champion Carlos Moya (Spain, No.42), and Ivan Ljubicic (Croatia, No.44) who incidentally stopped Moya from winning a hat-trick of titles in 2006.
Other well-known players include Janko Tipsarevic ( Serbia, No. 49), Marcel Granollers (Spain, No. 56), Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Spain, No.62) Fabio Fognini (Italy, No. 88) and Ivo Minar (Croatia, No. 97).
The Chennai Open will also see the return of Davis Cuppers Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes who will be playing with their respective partners Mark Knowles (Bahamas) and Lukas Dlouhy (Czech Republic).
Giving them tough competition will be the Bryan bothers - Mike and Bob - who until recently were ranked as the World No. 1 doubles pair.
India's top two ranked players Somdev Devvarman (201) and Prakash Amritraj (203) have been given the wild-cards as also Dlouhy (Czech Republic, 195).
