It's spring training for tennis as world's best prepare for Australian Open

If there is something in tennis akin to baseball's spring training, it is the next two weeks as players gear up for the year's first big tournament - the Australian Open beginning on Jan. 14.
 

Unlike the weeks leading into Wimbledon and the French and U.S. Opens, the players have no recent record of form because they have been off the tour for about a month and a half.
 
The runup to the Australian Open began on the weekend with the women playing WTA Tour tournaments on the Gold Coast in Australia and in Auckland, New Zealand.
 
As well, there is an eight-player exhibition this week in Hong Kong featuring Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic and Venus Williams.
 
There are also three men's ATP events - in Doha, Chennai, India, and Adelaide, Australia.
 
If that is not enough, there is also the national-team, mixed Hopman Cup competition in Perth, Australia. It is an exhibition and maybe the closest players come to playing just for fun during the year. There is money involved - but nobody gets too serious - and a lot of amusing byplay, especially in the mixed doubles.
 
A year ago, the final featured Russia (Nadia Petrova and Dmitry Tursunov) defeating Spain (Anna Medina Garrigues and Tommy Robredo). But, strangely, neither of those powerhouse nations is in the field this time.
There is a mishmash of teams led by Serbia with world No. 3's Jelena Jankovic and Novak Djokovic, and the United States with Serena Williams (who missed her first round-robin match with stomach flu) and Mardy Fish.
 
As a result of the potential for extreme heat, the Hopman Cup is played indoors in the Burswood Dome in Perth.
 
Other headliners in action this week are Nicole Vaidisova and Amélie Mauresmo (Gold Coast), Lindsay Davenport (Auckland), Nikolay Davydenko and Andy Murray (Doha), Rafael Nadal (Chennai) and Lleyton Hewitt (Adelaide).
 
The competitive preparation of world No. 1's Justine Henin and Roger Federer does not begin for another week.
 
Henin, Australian Open champion in 2004, hopes to get back on track after three ill-fated campaigns Down Under. In 2005, she arrived in Sydney but had to withdraw and return home with a knee injury. In 2006, she famously retired with a stomach malady during the Australian Open final against Mauresmo. Last year, she stayed home in the aftermath of her marriage breakup.
 
This year, she will play in Sydney next week in a field that includes the top four in the world, plus Mauresmo, whose rankings fell to No. 18 after she underwent an appendectomy in March.
Sydney is a mixed event, with defending champion James Blake and Hewitt providing the male star power.
 
Most of the high-profile men prefer to ease into the Australian summer season by playing the Kooyong exhibition at the venerable suburban Melbourne club, site of the Australian Open until it moved close to downtown in 1988.
 
True to his evolving inclination to marshal his resources, Federer will skip Doha for the second year in a row and tune up at Kooyong in an attempt to win a fourth Australian Open in five years.
 
A year ago he was beaten by Andy Roddick in the Kooyong final and immediately laughed off the loss. Two weeks later in the Melbourne Park semi-finals, he proceeded to humble Roddick 6-4, 6-0, 6-2, including an eerie, mid-match patch when he won 10 games in a row.
 
This year's field includes Roddick, David Nalbandian, Fernando Gonzalez, Tommy Haas, Murray, Ivan Ljubicic and tennis's eternal wild card, Marat Safin.
 
New for the 2008 Australian Open and lead-in events is a two-tone blue, U.S. Open-type surface called Plexicushion. It replaces the rubber-tire based Rebound Ace, which was found to vary too much - high-bouncing in the day's heat and lower-bouncing in cool weather and at night.
 
With the men's final already staged at night, and the women likely to follow suit in 2009, live viewing (16 hours ahead of Eastern time) of the title matches by North Americans seems destined to soon become the domain of middle-of-the night insomniacs.

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