Indian Wells to Slake Our Thirst

BILL DWYRE

Charlie Pasarell and Co. keep tennis' desert palace glittering

Freed from financial worries of earlier years, Pasarell, Ray Moore and Steve Simon keep finding ways to make Indian Wells Tennis Garden and its signature event, the BNP Paribas Open, bigger and better.

The Three Musketeers of tennis are really bursting at the seams this year.

It is their time. The sun is baking the Palm Springs desert most days now, and Charlie Pasarell, Ray Moore and Steve Simon are like 5-year-olds on Christmas morning.

Their BNP Paribas Open starts Wednesday. The tickets are flying over the counter. The weather forecast is good, so far. Plus, almost every player you have ever heard of and wanted to see play, as well as dozens you haven't and don't, will be there, squeaking and grunting and hitting shots regular people can't imagine.

The norm, when writing about events such as this, is to feature the players. Yes, Roger Federer will be there, as will Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray and the wonderfully quirky defending champion and No. 1 player in the world, Novak Djokovic. So will Maria Sharapova, No. 1-ranked Victoria Azarenka, 2011 newcomer and Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova and defending champion Caroline Wozniacki. Competing will be 11 former Indian Wells champions and 14 major-tournament winners.

But there is plenty of time for them. The tournament wraps up Sunday, March 18, with finals in men's and women's singles.

This will be the 13th year it has been held in the tennis Taj Mahal that Pasarell and Moore shepherded from conception to reality, with Simon, the tournament director, doing much of the heavy lifting. Even to the non-fan, it's worth at least a drive-by. With seating for 16,100, it is the second-largest tennis stadium in the country, after the U.S. Open's main court. Having a huge stadium in New York City is one thing. Having one rising from the desert sands of tiny Indian Wells is clearly another.

Pasarell, 68, and Moore, 65, were tournament players of note when even the biggest tournaments weren't worth $1 million, much less a $1-million winner's check for both men and women here.

Pasarell and Moore were good doubles players and played Davis Cup for the U.S. and South Africa, respectively. Pasarell's claims to playing fame were in sharing UCLA's No. 1 spot with Arthur Ashe and in his 1969 Wimbledon loss to Pancho Gonzalez, a first-round match that took 5 hours 12 minutes.

When their playing days were over, each sought a day job. They formed PM Sports Management and began operating the men's tour event in the desert. That began 37 years ago, with a nice, little sunken court at La Quinta Resort, where people lounged on the lawn and watched. It grew and moved a few miles to the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort in Indian Wells, a facility most thought was perfect.

Not Pasarell and Moore.

"A couple years into it," Pasarell says, "we could see we were running out of room."

So they bought 54 acres a mile away and put up a players' and spectators' palace at a cost of $77 million. That raised the question of whether they were also running out of sanity.

The first event in the new Indian Wells Tennis Garden was in 2000, making this year's the 13th.

How has that worked out?

There were rumors they weren't going to make it, that they would have to sell and move. But the best answer rests with the number of people who have trekked through the gates the last six years. Attendance in 2006 was 270,453. That has gone up every year, to last year's milestone of 350,086.

"We are looking for, hoping for, something like 380,000, maybe this year," Pasarell says.

Key to this has been the recent sponsorship commitment of the European bank BNP Paribas, and the purchase of the event by billionaire Larry Ellison. That has allowed the Three Musketeers to stop counting pennies and do what they love to do — figure out ways to improve the tournament. With Ellison's money.

"We want to make the fan experience better every year," Simon says.

This year's contribution, Ellison's idea, includes Hawkeye line-calling machines on each court. No other tennis tournament has that, not even the Grand Slams. The equipment needed for Hawkeye provides each court with video replay capabilities. During a lull, a fan watching on Court 6 can see an important point in the main stadium.

The outside courts have been upgraded to give each a stadium feel. Plastic chairs have been replaced by permanent seats.

The facility has 24 courts, but only eight are used for competition. The other 16 are practice courts — most on-site practice courts anywhere — and the large crowds that traditionally linger and hang over fences to see the stars warm up, or Nadal with his shirt off, will have newly installed bleachers from which to watch. New electronic signage will even tell them when and where to go. Yes, just for practice sessions.

The tickets, of course, cost an arm and a leg, but the Three Musketeers have addressed that too. They sell general admission tickets every day, starting at $35 early in the tournament and going to $50. For that, a person can wander the grounds and a new village area under a huge permanent tent, watch matches on the outside courts, see several matches at a time on big screens overlooking a lounging area on the northeast side of the stadium, or even sit in the main stadium in an upper-level section allotted to them.

By all measures, this has become the fifth-most prestigious tennis tournament in the world, right after the four Grand Slams. But don't assume the Musketeers will rest on their laurels. They never have.

Imagine a retractable dome over all 54 acres. Just for the days when it gets a little too hot, of course.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Nadal: Obsessive-Compulsive

He always takes a cold shower before he plays a match. He lines up two water bottles in front of his chair with the brand name facing exactly out. He wears his socks so that the logos on the socks are facing in an exact position. He takes his time before coming out for the coin toss, fiddling with this and that, while his opponent waits at the net.

Before warming up he goes out on the court and sweeps it with his feet along the baseline and the service line (even if it is a hard court and has been already wiped clean by maintenance crew). Before each serve he yanks out his pants in the back, then bounces the ball for up to a minute (in a YouTube video he bounced the ball 76 times before serving).

These are just a few of Rafael Nadal's rituals. People have long been speculating about whether he has OCD, primarily because of his many rituals and superstitions. He is certainly not the first athlete to show signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but his rituals are among the most prominent because he plays on center stage in an individual, rather than team, sport where the camera is always on him.

A recent interview by Lynn Barber in NadalNews.com confronted Nadal with the OCD question. Barber began the interview, which took place last summer at the Rome Masters, by asking him why he was continually tugging at his Armani underpants. He replied, "That is something I am doing all my career, something that I cannot control."

She then asked him if he suffered from OCD. He conferred with his PR man before answering. "It is something you start to do that is like a routine. When I do these things it means I am focused, I am competing—it's something I don't need to do but when I do it, it means I'm focused."

Eventually, she got around to asking him about his relationship with his girlfriend, Maria Francisca Perello, noting that he seemed to have more passion for his family than for her.

Nadal calls his family every day but his girlfriend not so often. "She is perfect for me, because she is very relaxed and easy-going and I've known her for a long, long time. Our families have been friends for many years." He treats her almost like an old family member, with a sense of duty, but not of passion.

Asked if he will marry her, Nadal responded with a flat "no." Barber reflected in her article on how routine the relationship with his girlfriend was—it was almost another habit, like yanking out his pants, devoid of any real emotion.

All of these things—the rituals, the superstitions, and the absence of passion in personal relations—are symptoms of OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by uncontrollable, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive, ritualized behaviors you feel driven to perform (compulsions). People with OCD, like Nadal, recognize that their obsessive thoughts and compulsive rituals are weird, but they are unable to control them.

Like the Greek myth of Sisiphus doomed to forever pushing a rock up a hill, obsessive-compulsives are forever stuck with their compulsive behavior. For example, they may check the the locks on their doors ten times to make sure they're all locked, wash their hands forty times a day, or tug at their underpants continuously throughout a tennis match.

As Nadal noted about the pants tugging: "That is … something I cannot control."

As I write this, Nadal was just defeated by Djokovic in the finals of the Australian Open. This is his seventh defeat by Djokovic in a row. Although the match went to five sets this time, I wonder, as do many others, how his apparent OCD will affect the rest of his season. Will his rituals, his attention to minute details, bring him back to the top again, or will it be a hindrance?

In order for a person with OCD to function, not only his water bottles have to be in order, but his life in general. When all his ducks are lined up, he can perform at maximum strength; if one duck is out of place, it can be devastating. When Nadal's parents split up a few years ago, he went through a period where his tennis game fell off. He was obsessing not about his pants, but his parents. He seemed to go into a depression that lasted a few months.

As a psychoanalyst, I have become aware of how obsessives are control freaks and they want to control everything in their lives; when Nadal couldn't control his parent's marriage, when he couldn't ensure the stability of his family, his own feeling of well-being took a hit. He spent endless hours of cogitation about it, and ended up losing his favorite tournament, the French Open.

If he has injuries, he obsesses about his injuries. If the tennis season is too long (11 months), he obsesses about that. If he loses, he obsesses about losing. Last year, he began losing to Novak Djokovic, and he appeared to get into a morose mood. After his fifth defeat by Djokovic, he commented in an interview, "When one player beat you five times, (it's) because today my game don't bother him a lot. Probably, the mental part is little bit dangerous for me."

Ah, yes, the mental part. That is the crux of his tennis world. Can he use his OCD to strengthen his confidence and his resolve, or will the OCD undermine both? Will his mind exert healthy control over the matter of his body and his tennis, or will mind become too strict and foreboding?

Let us hope he can keep all of his ducks in a row.

Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D., licensed psychoanalyst, professor of psychology and author of 20 books, is also an avid sports fan.

Yahoo Contributors

CRACKING UP

Nikolai Davydenko

Jan 16 (Reuters) - Court 19 was a lonely and unfamiliar old place for Nikolay Davydenko on Monday.

Playing in the shadows of the cavernous Melbourne Cricket Ground and with rumbling cross-city trams drowning out the pips and squeaks of muted noise from a tiny crowd, Russia's former world number three crashed and burned in the opening round of the Australian Open on a woebegone court he had only ever used for practice sessions.

A timid atmosphere. No video referrals. A pay cheque that left a sour taste in his mouth.

How the mighty had fallen in two short years.

Back in 2010, Davydenko arrived at Melbourne Park with the world at his feet.

He had won the season-ending 2009 ATP Tour Finals. Beaten Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in consecutive matches to win the Australian Open warm-up event at Doha.

He was among the top flight of favourites for the Open and joked, having won a million dollars at the ATP Finals, that he needed to keep winning so his wife, Irina, could afford to continue shopping in the manner she had become accustomed.

As if driven by the fear of his wife's flashing gold card, he motored to the quarter-finals at Melbourne Park before losing in four high-quality sets to Federer.

Then, disaster. Davydenko injured his wrist at Rotterdam in March and the walls came crashing down.

The marathon man of the tour played just 49 matches in 2010.

His year-ending ranking slipped to 22, the lowest it had been in six years.

In 2011, he won his 21st career title on clay in Munich, but again he played just 50 matches and failed to advance past the third round at any of the four grand slam tournaments.

He started the Australian Open at 52, still falling.

Cue to Monday. Lonely old court 19.

Such a barren scene that all it lacked was tumbleweed rolling across the baseline.

Davydenko played as if he was suitably disoriented.

What was he doing out here? Didn't the organisers know who he was? He was so far from the main show court on Rod Laver Arena he should have booked a taxi to get to his match against unheralded Italian Flavio Cipolla.

Davydenko mumbled and bumbled his way to a 6-4 4-6 3-6 6-2 6-1 defeat in three hours and 21 minutes.

It will not be remembered as one of his finest performances.

"I am used to show courts," he said. "I feel weird on court 19."

Davydenko had barely wiped the sweat from his furrowed brow when he joined the growing number of players speaking about getting a more equitable split of prize money at grand slam events -- particularly those lower ranked players who rarely advanced past the early rounds.

Players, these days, like him.

"We (the players) need to get more money in grand slam," Davydenko said. "What can we do? More talking."

Or winning.

(Editing by Greg Stutchbury; To comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

Federer's Back

MELBOURNE, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Roger Federer showed no sign of back trouble, testing it at every opportunity, as he cruised into the second round of the Australian Open on Monday with a 7-5 6-2 6-2 victory over qualifier Alexander Kudryavtsev.

The 30-year-old Swiss - who withdrew during the leadup Qatar Open after suffering back pain - was at his clinical best, blasting winners from all angles as he wrapped up the match in 98 minutes at Rod Laver Arena.

"I've been feeling fine for three, four days now," Federer said. "I've been able to practice full out. I really tried to put in an effort to play every point as hard as I could first to see how the back felt, try to get into it, hopefully win, and then see how I feel tomorrow.

"I'll get a lot more information tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll be fine."

The 2010 champion, bidding to extend his men's record to a 17th grand slam, traded baselines punches with his 172nd-ranked opponent early before landing a sublime backhand winner down the line to seal the first set and seize the initiative.

Kudryavtsev drew a rare scowl from Federer, however, when he won a furious baseline skirmish to break the Swiss's serve and claw back to 3-2 in the third set.

But the 26-year-old rued clipping a net cord in the next game that set up an easy backhand winner that allowed Federer to break back and cruise to victory.

"It was just tough against a guy who hits big and flat from both sides and takes a lot of chances," Federer said.

"I was anxious to find out how I was going to play, how my opponent was going to play me.

"I was really excited and a little nervous actually going into it, which was a good feeling to have.

"I'm looking forward to the other matches."

(Reporting by Ian Ransom/Greg Stutchbury; Editing by Mark Meadows; To comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com

Rafa's Cracked Knee

By Ian Ransom

MELBOURNE, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Rafa Nadal eased into the second round of the Australian Open with a fuss-free 6-4 6-1 6-1 win over American Alex Kuznetsov on Monday but said he felt lucky to be on the court because of a big injury scare.

The world number two explained that he felt a "crack" on his right knee when sitting on a chair at his hotel on Sunday and needed physiotherapy that afternoon and all day Monday to recover in time for his match.

"Yesterday afternoon the most strange thing happened to me," he told reporters. "I stood up and felt the knee a little bit strangely.

"I moved the leg two times to try to find some feeling. After the second time there was unbelievable pain.

"I really couldn't move the knee ... I had no movement on the knee."

Nadal said scans did not show any major problem but added he was still in pain when he started the match with qualifier Kuznetsov.

"After the first 10 games ... I started to play normally," said the 25-year-old Spaniard. "I really don't understand what happened yesterday but I am really happy that today I was ready to play and I played a fantastic match."

Nadal, who came into the tournament with a lot of focus on his injured shoulder, played with his knee strapped and took 44 minutes to wrap up the first set.

The left-hander then ran away with the next two sets, dominating from the baseline and giving Kuznetsov just two break-point opportunities when he served for victory.

The injury scare which Nadal put down to a "pinched" tendon will also send shivers down the spines of the organisers who have lost the marquee player to injury in the quarter-finals of the past two tournaments at Melbourne Park.

Nadal suffered tendonitis in both knees for several months in 2009 and was forced to miss Wimbledon.

He will meet Tommy Haas in the second round after the German beat American qualifier Denis Kudla 7-6 3-6 6-0 7-5.

(Additional reporting by Greg Stutchbury, editing by Tony Jimenez. To comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

Oz Seeds

 MELBOURNE, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Men's seeds for the 2012
Australian Open, which starts at Melbourne Park next Monday.  	
  1. Novak Djokovic (Serbia)  	
  2. Rafa Nadal (Spain)  	
  3. Roger Federer (Switzerland)  	
  4. Andy Murray (Britain)  	
  5. David Ferrer (Spain) 	
  6. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (France)  	
  7. Tomas Berdych (Czech Republic)  	
  8. Mardy Fish (U.S.)  	
  9. Janko Tipsarevic (Serbia) 	
 10. Nicolas Almagro (Spain)  	
 11. Juan Martin Del Potro (Argentina)	
 12. Gilles Simon (France)	
 13. Alexandr Dolgopolov (Ukraine)     	
 14. Gael Monfils (France) 	
 15. Andy Roddick (U.S.)  	
 16. John Isner (U.S.)  	
 17. Richard Gasquet (France)  	
 18. Feliciano Lopez (Spain)  	
 19. Viktor Troicki (Serbia)  	
 20. Florian Mayer (Germany)	
 21. Stanislas Wawrinka (Switzerland)        	
 22. Fernando Verdasco (Spain)	
 23. Milos Raonic (Canada)	
 24. Kei Nishikori (Japan)	
 25. Juan Monaco (Argentina)	
 26. Marcel Granollers (Spain)	
 27. Juan Ignacio Chela (Argentina)	
 28. Ivan Ljubicic (Croatia)	
 29. Radek Stepanek (Czech Republic)	
 30. Kevin Anderson (South Africa)	
 31. Jurgen Melzer (Austria)	
 32. Alex Bogomolov Jr. (United States)                         

(Compiled by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Peter Rutherford)	

(For the
sports blog Left Field go to: blogs.reuters.com/sport))	

Raonic in SAP -- 13 Feb

The SAP Open, the premier men’s professional tennis tournament in Northern California, announced Friday the singles players on the tournament's Direct Acceptance List.

Included in the singles 28-draw are two players formerly ranked No. 1 in the world – American Andy Roddick and Australian Lleyton Hewitt, each of whom are former SAP Open champions. The field features players representing 13 countries: United States, Germany, Czech Republic, France, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Luxembourg, Belgium, South Africa, Bulgaria, Canada and Uzbekistan. Canada’s Milos Raonic returns to San Jose to defend his first ATP World Tour singles title.

 

ATP

Raonic in Chennai Finals

Fourth seed Raonic, who received the 2011 ATP Newcomer of the Year award, defeated second seed Nicolas Almagro of Spain 6-4, 6-4 in 73 minutes for a place in his third ATP World Tour final.

Raonic hit 10 aces and dropped four points on serve in the 35-minute first set. The 21 year old went onto convert his second break point opportunity at 30/40, 4-4 in the second set, before saving three break points in the next game. He struck 17 aces overall to snap a five-match losing streak against Top 10 opponents (4-8 overall).

ATP

Fisticuffs?

Tennis-Hopman referee steps in to part angry Fish and Dimitrov

By Will Swanton

PERTH | Fri Jan 6, 2012 3:29pm GMT

Jan 6 (Reuters) - American Mardy Fish and Bulgaria's Grigor Dimitrov had to be separated by the match referee when they squared up to each other during a changeover in a bad-tempered Hopman Cup encounter on Friday.

The pair traded insults throughout their singles match and the mixed doubles before the tie between the two bottom teams in Group A ended with a 2-1 win for Bulgaria over the defending champions.

Dimitrov, in a hurry to get through the tie as he had to catch a late-evening plane to Sydney, thrashed world number eight Fish 6-2 6-1 in the singles before helping Tsvetana Pironkova to beat the American and team mate Bethanie Mattek-Sands in the mixed doubles.

Fish, who also lost in straight sets to Czech Tomas Berdych on Wednesday, directed angry words at Dimitrov while the pair were shaking hands after the singles at Burswood Dome.

During the doubles, Fish appeared to hit a

ball straight at the Bulgarian and then approached him as he sat in a chair during a change of ends.

Dimitrov jumped to his feet and the two men argued fiercely before the match referee rushed on to the court and stood between them. It was nearly a minute before order was restored.

"What can I say? It was one of these days when every touch goes in," said Dimitrov, the world number 76 and a former junior champion at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.

"Mardy was not on top of his game, but I think we had great rallies and gave a bit of entertainment as well. It's nice to have a win like this under my belt. I'm playing against a top-10 player and I've beaten him. Whatever I touched, it went in."

Mattek-Sands defeated Tsvetana Pironkova 6-4 6-4 in the opening match and Bulgaria had an 8-5 win in the mixed which was reduced to a single pro set so that Dimitrov could catch his flight.

Dimitrov and Pironkova took to the court for the doubles at 2110 local time, knowing that Dimitrov had to be on a 2350 flight so that he could play in qualifying for the Sydney International on Saturday.

He was rushed to the airport after the doubles finished at 2220.

Group winners the Czech Republic and France had already qualified for Saturday's Hopman Cup final.

Thomas Muster

(CNN) -- Thomas Muster believes in reinvention, and he doesn't do things by half measures.

The former "King of Clay" beat career-threatening injuries at the age of 21 to become Austria's first grand slam tennis champion and only world No. 1 player. But he shocked everyone by disappearing into early retirement in Australia.

After years of excessively good living, he made his top-level comeback at the age of 43, having lost 25 kilograms in a punishing get-fit regime.

And now, after finally putting his racket down a year or so later, with his desire to compete on court at the highest level sated again, Muster will focus on his family and wine-making business.

"When I went back to Austria I was looking for property. I grew up in this area and I knew these vineyards and property and the streets around it," he says of the Hochkittenberg wine estate he bought off a church diocese in 2004.

A winning partnership

Muster teamed up with vintner Manfred Tement, who cultivates the eight hectares of land and put out their first joint Toms Hochkittenberg wine in 2005.

 Thomas Muster: Former King of Clay

"He's a great tennis fan and I asked him if this vineyard was worth a dollar. He said it's a fantastic vineyard and it's got great soil and everything you need," the Liebnitz-born father of two told CNN's Open Court.

"That's how we started working together and that's how he started developing the vineyard around our house. Now it's a beautiful area with sauvignon, burgundy and muscatel grapes.

"It's all about the Styrian wines, it's about white wines -- 85 or 90% of our produce is white wine or white grapes. It's one of the best sauvignon areas in the world. It's still undiscovered here, that's what we like about it, but I think in the next few years people are going to find out where this is."

Muster won the French Open in 1995 and was the world's top-ranked player for six weeks the following year before quitting in 1999. It turns out he has the same passion for grapes as he did on the court.

"It's lovely be here and it's lovely to be back home. Manfred loves tennis and I love wine. It's not my profession, it's my passion," says Muster, who also produces bottled spring water from the Styrian Hochschwab area.

"He's such a great teacher and over the last years I've learned so much about wine, about the culture of wine, It's a great adventure. I love him as a friend and we have such a great time in the vineyards.

"It's hard work. To work a vineyard, you need a lot of guts to do that. To go out there and work all year, you almost feel that these people talk to the grapes. Wine is a lifestyle and you can talk about it for ages. It's a passion but it's not something I can do on a daily basis."

Disappearing Down Under

Manfred loves tennis and I love wine. It's not my profession, it's my passion

Thomas Muster

When Muster moved to Australia after feeling burned out by tennis, he quickly ballooned in weight to almost 100 kg.

"When I lost to Nicolas Lapentti on Court Two at the French Open I knew this was going to be my last match and it was very emotional for me," he recalls.

"On the other hand it was so great to feel like, 'I don't have to get up in the morning and practice!' When I went back home I threw everything I had related to tennis in the bin. I was so tired of playing tennis, so tired of traveling, of hotels, everything related to this sport.

"Maybe I should have just taken six months off. I don't know if this was the solution but I just felt that I was ready to stop."

Known as the King of Clay before Gustavo Kuerten and Rafael Nadal came on the scene, Muster won a record 12 tournaments in 1995 -- a feat that was not matched until Roger Federer in 2004.

He won 40 of his 44 career titles on clay, but was also a strong competitor on hard courts as he twice reached the semifinals of the Australian Open and made the U.S. Open quarterfinals on three occasions.

Overcoming adversity

It was in the United States where his career almost ended in 1989, when he was hit by a drunk driver in the car park at the event now known as the Miami Masters in Key Biscayne, where he was due to play the final the next day.

"Coming back from two sets down (against former French Open champion Yannick Noah) and achieving top 10, you're entering the level everyone wants to be in. Then I'm seeing myself in hospital a couple of hours later and having a smashed knee. It was devastating," Muster recalls.

I was so tired of playing tennis, so tired of traveling, of hotels, everything related to this sport

Thomas Muster

"But I didn't really know meant to have ligaments torn, I didn't know the consequences that people have after that. So I was very positive. I thought it was going to be a few weeks and I'll be walking again, running again. But looking back it was a really, really hard time suffering from that injury.

"We started rehab straight away and it helped me a lot. I stayed in a rehab center for three months, working every day. I knew I couldn't run, but I had that touch, hitting balls and that routine I was going through, getting up, practicing, having therapy, doing weights.

"As soon as I could walk again I was able to play pretty good tennis because it was a great chance to build up my upper body. I almost felt like a chicken before, really skinny."

The King of Clay

In 1995 Muster won 40 consecutive matches on clay, the best run since Bjorn Borg's 46 successive victories. Nadal surpassed that mark when he won 81 in a row from 2005-07.

Muster returned to Key Biscayne and beat two-time French Open champion Sergi Bruguera of Spain in the 1997 final. It was to be his last ATP Tour title, with final defeats in Cincinnati later that year and Estoril in 1998.

After his last outing at Roland Garros, he decided to skip Wimbledon -- where he is the only top-ranked player to have never won a singles match on the hallowed grass courts in London.

"I just didn't come back and then suddenly people started asking, 'Where is Thomas, why isn't he playing?' The press started to call me and I said, 'I'm going on a holiday and I don't know when I'm going to return,' so I never actually retired," Muster explains.

He went to Australia, got married and had a son -- and completely forgot about tennis.

"I gave up everything I had in Europe and moved to a town north of Brisbane called Noosa Heads. I was 99 kilos, I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day," Muster says.

"When we got divorced it was a time to come back home. It's my secure place, my haven with my family. I came back here to get grounded again, and that's also when I started to play tennis again."

Back to basics

Working out up to seven hours a day, Muster soon trimmed down again and was able to compete on the seniors' Champions Tour. But the desire to play at the top level burned deeply, and he started again from the bottom on the Challenger circuit, where he found victories difficult to come by.

I think my family needs me more than anybody else, and tennis doesn't need me anymore. Now it's time to do something else

Thomas Muster

"It was a completely mad decision -- but it was great, I would do it any time again. I had the best time in the past year and a half ... to practice, to play, to get fit, to fight these guys and not be given a game," he says.

"I took my car and my coach, and we were driving thousands and thousands of kilometers. We had to drop in our keys to get three balls and a towel -- all things that are given at the big tournaments where they pick you up with great cars and they have the hospitality, food all day, trainers, physios.

"You go to a Challenger and it's in the middle of nowhere, there's no sun shining for you, a little crowd of a few hundred spectators. Okay I lost all those matches, I won a few, but it was great, it was grounding."

Family ties

Muster finally called it quits at the highest level at his home tournament in Vienna in October, losing in the first round.

"I decided to retire in Vienna because I left the scene very quietly and never had the chance to say goodbye," he says.

"I was never homesick when I played before, but now when I leave, when I see my daughter and I have to pack my bags, it's like, 'Do I have to go?' And when I lose I want to come back, and that's not a good sign for a professional player, you have to want to be out there.

"I don't want to stretch it to a limit where people think I'm stupid what I'm doing. I want to be respected for what I did. I don't want to use wild-cards for players who deserve it.

"It's been a great honor but at the end I want to say it's been a great time. I want to play a couple of senior tour events next year, but that's the level I can play at. You don't want to play tennis at 50 on a competitive level.

"I think my family needs me more than anybody else, and tennis doesn't need me anymore. I respect my wife a lot for taking all that in. She said, 'I didn't marry a tennis player, you'd retired.' Now it's time to do something else."

Raonic starts 2012 at Chennai

Jan 4 (Reuters) - Chennai Open men's singles second roundresults on Wednesday (prefix denotes seeding). Go Soeda (Japan) beat 5-Ivan Dodig (Croatia) 7-6(6) 6-3 3-Stanislas Wawrinka (Switzerland) beat Edouard Roger-Vasselin (France) 3-6 6-3 7-5 Dudi Sela (Israel) beat Benoit Paire (France) 4-6 6-2 6-4 4-Milos Raonic (Canada) beat Victor Hanescu (Romania) 6-1 6-4 (Compiled by Infostrada Sports; editing by Toby Davis)

Nadal's Heavier Racquet

DOHA | Mon Jan 2, 2012 3:45pm GMT

Jan 2 (Reuters) - World number two Rafa Nadal said his preparations for the new season had not been ideal as he adjusted to using a heavier racket.

The Spaniard, who plays Germany's Philip Kohlschreiber in the first round of the Qatar Open on Tuesday, believes his game may suffer in the short term after making the switch but would improve in the months ahead.

"My preparation is not the perfect one, and I'm trying to play with a little bit heavier racket, to get a little bit more power," Nadal told reporters on Monday.

"(With the new racket) I'm losing a little bit of control now, sometimes I don't feel the forehand as good as before. But it's something that I believe can help me in the future."

Nadal said he had first considered switching to a heavier racket after the U.S. Open in September but would not have had time to adapt because of his playing schedule.

"After the Davis Cup final I had all the rackets prepared at home to change," the 10-times grand slam champion added. "In theory I'm supposed to practise almost a month or at least three weeks with the (new) racket, but finally I practised only one week, and I'm here now, so probably it's not good enough.

"You can't think that everything will be perfect from the beginning, but you make the change thinking it'll be better in the future. There's no magic, but the new racket can help a little bit to improve my game. It's a risk I'm taking at the beginning of the season."

Kids Tennis - Slower Ball