Tennis News : Ward draws Spaniard in qualifying

Ward reached the second qualifying round at the Australian Open in 2010

Britain's number two James Ward will play Spain's Inigo Cervantes-Huegun in the first round of Australian Open qualifying in Melbourne on Wednesday.

Ward, 24, is ranked 60 places above his opponent and the pair are scheduled fourth on Court Four, with the day's play starting at 2300 GMT on Tuesday.

Andy Murray is the only British man with direct entry into the main draw.

Men's wildcard entries

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• Lleyton Hewitt (Aus)


• James Duckworth (Aus)


• Greg Jones (Aus)


• Marinko Matosevic (Aus)


• Ben Mitchell (Aus)


• Jesse Levine (US)


• Jeremy Chardy (Fra)


• Tatsuma Ito (Jpn)

Former world number one Lleyton Hewitt has been given a wildcard into the main draw, which begins on 16 January.

Ward has failed to make it through the qualifying process in Australia on three previous occasions. In 2010 he won his first match against Australian Matt Reid but then lost to Ukraine's Illya Marchenko in the second round.

Three British women have qualified as of right for the main singles draw - Elena Baltacha, Anne Keothavong and Heather Watson.

Laura Robson will be among the British women trying to qualify, with the draw taking place at 0500 GMT on Wednesday.

Robson, who turns 18 later this month, has recovered from injury and is ready to start her 2012 season.

Women's wildcard entries

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• Casey Dellacqua (Aus)


• Ashleigh Barty (Aus)


• Olivia Rogowska (Aus)


• Madison Keys (US)


• Aravane Rezai (Fra)


• Shuai Zhang (Chi)

She told the Australian Open website.: "It's always better to qualify.

"I've been lucky enough to get wildcards into Wimbledon for the last few years, but hopefully I won't need one this year. I'm going to play qualifying here and hopefully I'll do well.

"It was very pleasing [to win my first Grand Slam main draw matches last year], especially playing at the US Open because I qualified and then won my first-round match. That was a big deal for me.

"I made it to the final round of US Open qualifiers the last two years before that. Just to be able to qualify when we had to play two matches in one day because of [Hurricane Irene], was a bit of a nightmare, so I was really happy."

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