G’day everyone,
It’s been great to be able to spend some time in Australia since the Davis Cup in Townsville. I’ve been doing alot of rehab and been in the gym everyday to strengthen up my hip after the injury. I also made time to head down to Melbourne to catch up with a couple of my mates and watch the Adelaide Crows take on Carlton at the MCG (pictured here with my trainer/physio Ivan who is a Carlton supporter and went very quiet as the day went on!). I really enjoyed being able to see my good mate Tyson Edwards play a fantastic game and be able to catch up with all the boys in the locker room.

My first clay court tournament will be Rome, to compete in the Italian Open which is an ATP Masters Series event. I’m using it as a real preparation week to get used to the European clay courts again and especially coming off the hip injury. The big tournament that I’m focusing on is the French Open and having my body in as good a nick as possible. I really feel like my clay court game has improved and I’ve played some of my best matches on the dirt in recent years. It’s taken the best clay court player in Rafa Nadal the last 2 years to knock me out of the French Open.

Davis Cup

We were always going to be red hot favourites to get through against Thailand in the Asia-Oceania playoff in Townsville but you can never take any opponents lightly. I think our whole team did a great job of preparing and being in as good a shape as possible and it really showed in the matches. Gooch got us off to a great start and that match was always going to break the tie wide open if Gooch could get up. He was a little lucky to get through in such a tight battle with Danai Udomochoke, but they’re the matches you need in Davis Cup and that experience will really help him in the future.

I wasn’t able to practice as hard as I would have liked going into the tie but it was important not to do any more damage to my injuried hip. Even though it wasn’t 100% I got through the match in quick fashion and was able to put my hand up to play the doubles on Saturday. Handles and I have played some tough Davis Cup doubles matches in the last couple of years so it was nice to wrap this one up comfortably.

It’s been our goal for the last year to get back in the world group in 2009 and so far we’ve done everything possible. The draw could have been a lot better for us though, with the playoff tie going to be played in Chile in September. In my opinion the ITF should use some common sense when doing the draw for Davis Cup ties. They plainly just go off the ITF country rankings (which are only on a 4 year turnover) and don’t look at players from those countries and their ATP rankings. It’s amazing that they don’t seed countries such as Serbia (Djokovic, Tipsarevic & Zimonjic), Switzerland (Federer & Wawrinka) and Chile (Gonzalez & Massu) for the world group playoffs.

It will be disappointing for either Australia or Chile not to make it through to the elite level next year. Both countries deserve to make the world group. I’m personally really looking forward to the challenge of going to the South American country and have the opportunity to lead the team into battle. We have a great Aussie team and we all really enjoy coming together to represent our country in one of the most important competitions in our sport.

Cheers