The presence of Ryan Geerdink, from the Netherlands, who is unbeaten since arriving in Dunedin earlier this year, will add interest. He has been given top seeding.
Last year's finalist, Alex Low, from Nelson, is second seed, and is well known locally, having played and coached in Dunedin for the last few seasons while doing tertiary study.
The stars of the national junior championships, Paddy Ou and Carlos Reid, have been seeded next. Reid took third place at the nationals, while Ou was sixth.
Pat Nolan, who played No1 for Otago in the pre Christmas ties, has been sidelined with a shoulder injury, but Ryan Eggers, the only player to push Geerdink in club play, and Hamish Low, the younger brother of Alex, are others to warrant consideration.
With Georgia Hume out injured and Sian and Hanna English having departed, Jessie Stevenson gets her chance to break through at this level and is top seed.
Auckland student Harriet Dorrington is ranked second and looked effective when resuming interclub last weekend. The next two seedings go to Rebecca Dellaway, from North Otago, and Annabelle Ecroyd, from South Canterbury.
An interesting first-round match sees the promising Meg Timu, a boarder at St Hilda's, meeting Nicky Wallace, the usual North Otago No1, with the winner to meet Ecroyd, who has had limited matchplay and had a close tussle with Timu earlier in the season.
The doubles titles are wide open with several scratch pairings. Geerdink teams up with Darryl Paterson, who was a singles finalist as long ago as 1986, and still retains good fitness levels. Paterson has achieved at a solid level in several sports without breaking into the very top ranks and it would be a fitting reward if he could achieve a provincial title at this stage.
However, the Low brothers will be a tough pairing with a good ability to work as an established combination.
The women's doubles has very few established pairings and any one of four or five could take the title.
Play starts today at 9am, with singles finals expected to be late tomorrow morning.
Should it rain, play will be transferred to the Edgar Centre.
• New Zealand's Marina Erakovic has been knocked out of the WTA tennis tournament in Acapulco at the quarterfinal stage after losing to top seed Dominika Cibulkova in straight sets, The New Zealand Herald reported.
The Kiwi No 1, who is ranked 69, went down 6-4 7-5 to the world No13 but it is an improvement on her early season form which saw her win just one singles match in her first five tournaments leading into Mexico.
Cibulkova will face either Croatian Ajla Tomljanovic or China's Shuai Zhang in the semifinals.
