26th December, 1999

I Could be Back for Sydney Doubles

My shoulder continues to improve steadily, but I won't make a decision on playing singles at the Australian Open until I talk with tournament chief executive Paul McNamee.

I've started light serving and there's some soreness in the shoulder, which is to be expected, so there are obvious concerns about trying to play best-of-five-set matches without having played any other tournaments before the Aussie Open. I withdrew last week from the AAPT Championships and the Colonial Classic because I knew I wouldn't be ready to play competitive singles, meaning I wouldn't have any singles matches going into the Open.

There's still a chance I could play, but I've got to weigh up the long-term consequences of rushing to get back for the Australian Open and the risks involved b

At this stage, I'm going to go to Adelaide to practice with the Aussies at Memorial Drive and, if all goes well, I'm a chance to play doubles with Wayne Arthurs at the adidas International in Sydney.

If there are no problems with the shoulder, then I could play the Australian Open even though I wouldn't have played asingles match since the end of August, when I broke down at the US Open.

I continue to get good reports from the physio on the shoulder and I think the joint is stronger now than it has ever been. If I can't play singles at the Australian Open there would be obvious doubts about playing singles against Switzerland in the first round of the Davis Cup in the first week of February.

But I don't want to rule myself out prematurely because there's still the chance that everything could click in practice and I could find myself hitting the ball really well and feeling no pain when I'm serving.  As it is, I'm really pleased with my groundstrokes.

By coming back in doubles, the workload on the shoulder when serving is significantly less and it would give me the chance to have another crack at the Australian Open title I won last year with Jonas Bjorkman.

Deb