ASB Classic tournament director Nicolas Lamperin reveals easiest and toughest players to get for Auckland: "It was more challenging with Emma Raducanu"

Nicolas Lamperin is the new tournament director of the ASB Classic in Auckland and ahead of the event he sat down with local media to talk about the upcoming event. It's going to be a competitive time ahead for the event as the new United Cup drew quite a few players their way. Despite that Lamperin was able to persuade several players to come to the longstanding event with Casper Ruud headlining the field on the men's sade.

He wasn't hard to get:

"One of the easiest was Casper Ruud. You would have thought it would have been more difficult because of his ranking, but he’s the kind of guy who likes to play a lot of ATP 250 tournaments and doesn’t mind playing the week before a grand slam."

One of the hardest? Emma Raducanu:

"I guess it was more challenging with Emma Raducanu. We wanted to wait to see what happened after the US Open. On both sides there was interest, she was also keen to hear about what was happening with the United Cup, so it took longer to agree. But in the end we were on the same page.