DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY

Rafael Nadal made 2008 his own, but the signs are not good for the Australian Open where he will bid to extend his mastery with a first hardcourt Grand Slam. The muscular Mallorcan has played only three tour matches since October, when he wrapped up his season early with an injured right knee, and crashed out in last week’s Qatar Open quarters.


Nadal, 22, was also beaten in an exhibition event by the in-form Andy Murray, and will have to play his way into form here. “There’s no damage to my confidence,” he insisted in Doha.

“I knew that the beginning of the season was not going to be easy because, although I have had more rest than other players, I have also had more time outside of competition than others.

“So it is a little bit more difficult to come back fast to my rhythm. I’ll leave here with positive feelings when I go to Australia.” The clay-court king also started slowly last year, winning his first title in April before finally wresting the top ranking from Roger Federer.

Last year’s Australian Open semi-final — which he lost to an inspired Jo-Wilfried Tsonga — was his best performance in four visits to Melbourne Park. However, Nadal won Beijing Olympic gold and also made the US Open semis, suggesting he is not a complete slouch on hard surfaces. The Spaniard also has something else in his favour one — of the fiercest competitive streaks in modern sport.

This desire can be traced back to his low-key home life in Manacor, Mallorca, where he was born into a family wellversed in sporting success.

Uncle Miguel was the ‘Beast of Barcelona,’ a well-known footballer who was capped 62 times by Spain. But it was his father Sebastien’s other brother, Toni, who changed Nadal’s life when he first handed him a tennis racquet at the age of just four. After shedding his two-handed forehand at about nine, the young Nadal quickly rose through the ranks and reached the junior Wimbledon semi-finals at his first attempt in 2002.

TOP 100
‘Rafa’ reached the top 100 in April 2003, making his first ATP final at Umag, and enjoyed his career breakthrough at Sopot a year later. In 2005 the clay-court livewire began to scythe through the rankings, reaching the top 50 in January and the top 10 three months later.

The first of four consecutive French Open crowns brought him to the number two spot that July — a position which he occupied until last August, when he finally overhauled Federer. The all-action Nadal was fast garnering a reputation for his feats on clay, and he shattered Guillermo Vilas’ 53-match win streak with 81 straight victories on the surface between April 2005 and May 2007.

SEVEN TITLES
Despite ongoing knee injury concerns exacerbated by his physical style of play, the Spaniard upped the tempo last season grabbing seven titles and ending Roger Federer’s five-year Wimbledon reign in an epic final.

The legend is secured, but super-stardom appears at odds with Nadal’s selfeffacing personality and unflashy lifestyle. Eschewing the trappings of fame, Nadal still lives with his parents above the family restaurant in Manacor where the ardent Real Madrid fan watches football matches and goes fishing with his childhood friends.

While fiercely protective of his private life Nadal is reportedly dating local beauty Maria Francisca ‘Xisca’ Perello. AFP Rochus test for Nadal

Rafael Nadal finds British contender Andy Murray in his half of the men’s singles for the Australian Open, starting on Monday.

Murray, the fourth seed, is bidding to become Britain’s first men’s Grand Slam champion since Fred Perry in 1936. Second seed Roger Federer, chasing one more slam title to equal the record 14 set by American Pete Sampras, has defending Australian champion Novak Djokovic in his bottom half of the draw.

Nadal begins his campaign against Belgian Christophe Rochus and could face unseeded former world number one and Australian finalist Lleyton Hewitt in the fourth round.

Hewitt, whose ranking has slipped to 74 after hip surgery last August, has a tough first-up opponent in former finalist and 13th seed Chilean Fernando Gonzalez.

Murray’s first-round opponent is Romanian Andrei Pavel and he also has last year’s beaten finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France in his quarter of the draw.

Federer, beaten by Djokovic in last year’s semi-final, takes on Italian Andreas Seppi in the first round and could meet 2005 champion and 26th seeded Russian Marat Safin in the third round.
Djokovic starts off with a qualifier and has American seventh seed Andy Roddick and Argentine 10th seed David Nalbandian in his quarter of the draw.

Tough draw for Serena
Serena Williams, chasing her fourth Australian Open title, has drawn sister Venus and in-form Russian Elena Dementieva in her half of the women’s singles draw.

The second-seeded American is looking for her 10th Grand Slam title, but has been given few favours by the draw’s computer.

She starts off against China’s Meng Yuan and has a potential quarter-final against Russian eighth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova and a possible semifinal against either her sixthseeded sister Venus or fourthseeded D e m e n t i e v a . Venus Williams kicks off her Australian campaign against Angelique Kerber, while Dementieva faces another German, Kristina Barrois.

World number one Jelena Jankovic has Russian third seed Dinara Safina and fifth-seeded Serbian Ana Ivanovic in her top half of the draw.

Rooney winner moves United up to second

Wayne Rooney scored the winner but suffered a hamstring injury in a 1-0 victory over Wigan Athletic that moved Manchester United up to second in the Premier League on Wednesday. The England striker netted after just 54 seconds at Old Trafford but hobbled off soon after scoring and will be sidelined for at least three weeks, manager Alex Ferguson said.

“Unfortunately we lost Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez came on and did fantastically for us then he got injured. It was a test of our character for the last half hour because it was an absolutely brilliant performance by Wigan,” Ferguson told Sky Sports News.

United, who have 44 points and a game in hand, will go top if they beat Bolton Wanderers on Saturday as leaders Liverpool, who have 46, do not play until they host Everton in the Merseyside derby on Monday. Wigan, coached by former United favourite Steve Bruce, remain in seventh place. Shortly before kickoff they rejected a 10 million pounds bid from Tottenham Hotspur for Honduras midfielder Wilson Palacios. “When the big boys start circling and coming and nicking your players, unfortunately if they pay enough they are always going to get their own way,” Bruce said.

CHELSEA WIN
Chelsea went some way to relieving the pressure on coach Luiz Felipe Scolari by coming from behind to beat Southend United 4-1 in an entertaining FA Cup third-round replay on Wednesday. Goals from Michael Ballack, Salomon Kalou, Nicolas Anelka and Frank Lampard gave Chelsea, with only one win in their previous six matches, a deserved win after League One (third division) Southend had taken a shock 16th-minute lead with an Adam Barrett header. The ultimately emphatic nature of the victory was just the boost Brazilian coach Scolari needed after a recent run of unimpressive performances.

DATE WITH DESTINY

Federer had his aura of invincibility shattered, but this time the Swiss is determined to win one Grand Slam to cement his legacy as the greatest player of all time.

Just a year ago, Roger Federer arrived at the Australian Open as the undisputed king of the courts, ready to kick off another season of domination with his third successive title. A trifling virus couldn’t stop the Swiss maestro, right? Wrong. The debilitated Federer went down in the semis to eventual champion Novak Djokovic, ending a record run of 10 straight Grand Slam finals and setting in motion the toughest period of his career.

This year, Federer comes to Melbourne with a few questions to answer. Can he regain the number one ranking? Does he still have the mental edge? Can he beat Pete Sampras’s Grand Slam record before age catches up with him? He can start to answer at least one of those straight away. “I have high hopes and aim to play well from the start,” he said this week. “Of course I’m trying to beat the record of 14 from Sampras so we will see how it goes.”

NEW PHASE
Federer, who begins the year without the top ranking for the first time since 2004, is entering a new phase of his career.

He has already announced a slimmed-down schedule, dropping clay-court events to stay fresh for Wimbledon where he is desperate to win back the title from Rafael Nadal.

If all goes to plan, Federer will win here and overhaul Sampras’s 14 Grand Slam titles in London, cementing his legacy as the greatest player of all time. That career, with 57 titles and counting plus 44 million US dollars in prize money, stems from humble beginnings when he was born in Basel, Switzerland, on August 8, 1981.

SAMPRAS EFFECT
Federer first picked up a racquet aged eight, inspired by the exploits of Sampras and Boris Becker and an outstanding amateur career followed, including the junior Wimbledon title in 1998.

After turning pro, he ended 1999 as the youngest player in the top 100 and reached his first ATP final in Marseille the following year. But it was in 2001 that he made his entrance, famously ending Sampras’s 31-match Wimbledon winning streak in the fourth round.

He stalled briefly, losing a number of finals in 2002 when he was staggered by the death in a car accident of his first coach, Peter Carter.

MAIDEN SLAM
Rock-bottom, and the careerdefining moment, came at the 2003 French Open with a firstround defeat to Luis Horna. One month later the chastened Federer took Wimbledon by storm for his first Grand Slam title aged 22. It set the stage for a spell of unprecedented dominance. Federer reached number one in February 2004 and racked up 11 titles that year, repeating at Wimbledon and winning the US and Australian Opens. Tennis had rarely seen anything like it but Federer matched the exploits in 2005, winning another 11 including successful defences at Wimbledon and the US Open in a season he finished 81-4.

INCREDIBLE RUN
Only the French Open eluded him in 2006 and 2007 as Federer extended his incredible Grand Slam run which left most of his rivals, except Nadal, at a loss. It was a bout of mononucleosis which finally stopped him when he went out in the semis here last year, beginning his worst season since becoming number one. He was hammered by Nadal in the French Open final but recovered for Wimbledon, only to lose his five-year unbeaten run to the Spaniard in an epic showdown.

LOSING THE STATUS
Suddenly, Federer was vulnerable and he lost his number one ranking after a record 237 weeks. Now world number two, and in danger of slipping to third behind Djokovic, Federer remains his phlegmatic self. “I felt the most (pressure) when (I) reached six or seven slam titles and everyone was expecting me to win every match I played. That’s gone away and it’s a relief,” he shrugged. “But I’m very motivated and will remain so for a long time. I just don’t feel a lot of pressure now.”

AUSTRALIAN OPEN BOSS DEFENDS TIMING OF TOURNAMENT

SYDNEY: Australian Open organisers have dismissed suggestions from Roger Federer that the first Grand Slam of the year should be switched from its usual January time slot to February.
Fededer, president of the ATP Player Council, said he would like to see the Australian Open moved back a few weeks so the top players could enter warm-up events in the Middle East and Australia. Under the current schedule, players often choose between events but Federer, one of a handful of players who played at both regions, said changing the dates of the Australian Open would give all players the chance to play both.

“The calendar is always something we do talk about,” Federer told reporters in Melbourne. “I guess to fix the Australian Open problem, having more tournaments beforehand it, is to move it backwards a couple of weeks so you have more of an Australian swing coming, and maybe also the middle eastern tournaments.” A number of top players, including world number one Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Andy Roddick, as well as Venus Williams played warm-up events overseas instead of the Australian circuit. Australian Open organisers have long faced complaints from players about the timing of their summer circuit but Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley said there was nothing wrong with the lead-up events.