Now that we’re merely a week away from the start of the first Slam of the year, it’s a good time to see the form of the top players.

Rafael Nadal

Last year, Nadal made a serious go at winning the year-end championships.  He took a week off and chose not to play the Paris Masters, considered the tournament with the fastest surface.  Nadal generally doesn’t do as well on fast courts, mostly because it’s the favorite surface of so many other players.

Nadal’s biggest concern is his preparation leading into the Australian Open.  He had fever probably due to flu and played through it.  He played a three setter against Lukas Lacko including a 6-0 bagel that Nadal might have chosen to endure just so he could get to the third set.  Although he got past Gulbis in straight sets, he was no match for Davydenko.  He did get in some doubles after choosing not to withdraw, and teamed with Marc Lopez to take the title in Doha.

Nadal is staying an extra two days in Doha to recover from the flu.  The main question is how he’ll deal with the heat in Melbourne and a disruption to his practice schedule.  He may have to work his way into the tournament, but usually, Nadal has no problems with the early rounds, even if he’s not 100%.  I do think he’s not the favorite heading into the Australian Open (that would be Federer), but for now, I’m going to take the positive view that he’s still a solid number 2.

Roger Federer

Federer has long told the press that a match is good if he doesn’t get broken or he doesn’t face break points.  He often says this in matches that go to tiebreaks or 7-5 against players he should win more easily against.  Federer may choose to keep early matches closer to simulate the pressure he would face in later rounds, which is a risky ploy, but something I might not put past Federer to do. Note the close matches with Schoorel and Chiudinelli, but relative blowouts of Troicki.

There are two positive signs in Federer’s game this year.  First, he’s winning his service games very quickly.  Witness his match against Davydenko.  Davydenko did make an unusual comment that he felt Federer was going for winners sooner than usual, which implied there might be some kind of problem for Federer, but in any case, he didn’t really get a chance to test that out as he was being outhit by another guy who loves to play at the baseline.

With Federer’s win, one has to imagine he’s the favorite heading into the Australian Open.

Novak Djokovic

The big question about Djokovic is the same every year this time.  How will he deal with the heat?  Djokovic played well from the US Open onward as he usually does.  But the heat seems to do Djokovic in every year.

This year, Djokovic chose to play the Hopman Cup.  The Hopman Cup has some nice features.  First, you are guaranteed three singles and three doubles matches because of round robin play.  There’s no pressure to “win” as there’s no ATP points associated with the event.  You also have weaker opponents, by and large, playing the event.  On the men’s side, Djokovic and Murray were the class of the field.  Isner and Hewitt were perhaps the next highest ranked players.  Monfils was supposed to make an appearance, but didn’t.  Meanwhile, Roddick, Soderling, Federer, Nadal, and several others chose to play ATP 250 events instead.

Djokovic won all three of his singles matches, but was pushed to three sets by Andrey Golubev.  Perth was supposed to be pretty hot, so it’s positive that he got through his matches, but to be fair, these are best of 3 set matches.

Although Djokovic has historically had problems, he’s still almost always good to the quarterfinals, and since this is his third year (at least) of dealing with the heat, surely, he must have had some solutions to his woes.  So despite health issues, one ought to pencil in Djokovic to the quarters at the very least.

It was recently revealed that Djokovic and Murray train against one another prior to Slams.  It makes some sense.  Since they have been seeded 3 and 4 for some time, they can’t meet each other until the finals, and there’s never been a final with both Djokovic and Murray, at least, not so far.

Andy Murray

For the second year in a row, Murray played the Hopman Cup with Laura Robson.  Robson has yet to make a huge leap in the rankings which means she’s still likely to lose her matches.  Last year, they did well by winning the mixed doubles in the round robin.  Murray actually lost to Robredo in the finals while Robson surprisingly won her match.  They proceeded to lose to Spain in the doubles.  This year, Robson had a cold and that seemed to affect her playing.  They lost 2 of the mixed doubles matches, and forfeited the third.

Murray won all three of his matches in straight sets.  His closest match was against Nicolas Mahut, who was subbing in for an injured Gael Monfils.  Murray appeared to treat this as a kind of practice match, working on things he might need for the Australian Open.  Murray had revealed he was working on his serve.  Murray’s historic problem is first serve percentage (usually low) and second serve speed (also usually low).  When he’s playing well, it’s hard to tell that his first serve percentage is much lower than it should be.  Only when he struggles do people notice.

In the last year or so, Murray has worked on the pace of his first serve and when he has it humming, it can be a hard serve to handle.  Against Mahut, Murray’s first serve percentage still seemed a bit troubling.

Murray appeared to be working on hitting balls down the line (not real close to the lines) since his huge preference is to hit crosscourt.  He appears to be working on hitting very spinny high balls as well.  Murray, like Roddick, is a strongly crosscourt player.  One reason Djokovic has fared, in general, better than Murray is because Djokovic prefers hitting down the line, both on backhands and forehands.  This is the shot you need to be an elite player.  When Murray was losing to Ferrer on clay last year, Ferrer peppered the Murray backhand with inside out forehands, but Murray seemed reluctant to pull the trigger and hit a down the line backhand.  He was gaining more confidence in this shot as the year moved along, but clearly, it’s something he needs to feel confident in if he expects to mount a serious challenge to the title.

Murray tends to be more up-and-down in Slams than Djokovic, but the Australian Open his his best surface, and he reached the finals last year and the quarters the year before (when he was ill).  Again, he should be expected to reach the quarters.  He does need to keep his consistency up as he’s prone to spells where he makes too many errors.  He’s not nearly as steady as Djokovic because he hits a flatter ball.

Robin Soderling

Last year, Soderling lost early in Chennai (to Robby Ginepri) then faded out of the Aussie Open in the first round (to Granollers).  This year, he decided to play Brisbane instead and is in the finals.  Soderling’s hard hitting style should do him well to the quarterfinals.  He would probably prefer to avoid Nadal or Federer, but he does have a habit of running into them.  As the fifth seed, he’ll give one of the top 4 seeds some issues.  Soderling would probably prefer to play Nadal, of all players.

Soderling recently parted ways with his coach, Magnus Norman, who wanted to stay in Sweden more.  He’s hired former Italian pro, Cladio Pistolesi, to be his coach.

Tomas Berdych

Berdych’s ranking is floating high because of two tournaments: the French Open and Wimbledon.  Yes, he also reached the finals of Miami.  Berdych has been considered a dangerous player for a while, but he also has crazy losses to players ranked much below him.  One reason may be his flat shots.  He gets effortless pace from his groundstrokes, but he can be prone to errors.  He also doesn’t seem like the most focused guy.  Instead of taking his great play and working from there (like Soderling did), Berdych seems to have slipped back to his “talented, but inconsistent” mode.  Had he won Chennai, instead of losing to Wawrinka (handily), it might have been a different story.

It’s too tough to decide how far Berdych will go.  He’s probably good to the fourth round, but might lose earlier.  I don’t know that he’ll go that deep in the Aussie Open.

David Ferrer

Ferrer generally doesn’t play well in Slams.  In the past, he was seeded lower, so his chances of running into a top seed early was fairly likely.  As a top 8 player, he should at least avoid some headaches until the quarterfinals.  Ferrer did win Valencia last year, which is indoors, but he lost all 3 of his matches in round robin play at the year-end championships.

Also, unlike any of the players already mentioned, Ferrer did not play this week, and will instead, play the week before the Australian Open.

Don’t expect Ferrer to go deep.

Andy Roddick

Roddick revealed that he had mono through the middle parts of the year.  He said there were days he couldn’t even get up to go practice, and this is a guy that likes to practice.  It apparently affected his match against Yen-Hsun Lu and even there, he managed to push it to 5 sets.

Roddick says he’s feeling better than ever, and he has generally done well at the Aussie Open.  He likes the heat.  With a finalist appearance in Brisbane, he seems as good to go as ever.  Now, if he could only get a draw where he doesn’t see an American for a while (Americans seem to give him problems).

The rest

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who was off the tour for a while after Wimbledon, made a pretty good showing in Doha, reaching the semis.  He made his name a few years ago at the Australian Open and reached the semis last year.  He’s a tough guy to play, and may provide headaches.  His compatriot, Gael Monfils, also frequently injured, looks like he may not play the Australian Open, due to knee pain.

The big question is Juan Martin del Potro.  Pretty much out of action for all of 2010. del Potro will play his third tournament since returning from wrist surgery.  It would be a miracle for del Potro to make a deep run, and more likely that he will exit in the first round.

Nikolay Davydenko’s ranking of about 20 will make him a bit of a dangerous floater.  He had hoped not to bump into Federer or Nadal at Doha until much later, and got his wish.  But he could face a top player as early as the third round.  This could make whichever section he’s in very very interesting.   No one wants to face the former top ten Davydenko that early, but Davydenko would also prefer not to face anyone good that early either.

Davydenko’s game isn’t quite where it was a year ago, when he was razor sharp.  But it’s good enough to give any player trouble.

With a Slam, there’s likely to be a surprise here or there, at least in the early rounds.  Players like Wawrinka, Stepanek, even Karlovic, might cause some upsets.

The tennis calendar is already heating up with Slams around the corner!