CUP STILL ON THE AGENDA

AFTER being forced out of the US Open last week with my shoulder injury I will stay in New York until the middle of the week when I'll decide whether I can play in the Davis Cup semi-final in Brisbane in three weeks.

If I think I can play, I'll go home to Brisbane and get ready.  If not, I'll still go home to Brisbane, put my feet up and take the rest of the year off.

I've got to think about the long term.

If I don't play for the rest of the year my ranking will probably fall to about 20 or 25 and that means I'll go into the Australian Open in January unseeded.

To me that's irrelevant. The important thing now is to get the shoulder right.  Missing three months now is not going to ruin my career.

The US Open has become a bit of a minefield this year with the number of injured players, Pete Sampras and Carlos Moya also breaking down.  The schedule makes it virtually impossible for the players to have an off-season.

There's a big demand for tennis and every country seems to want to have a tournament so there's basically no rest for us.   I know the ATP Tour, which runs the men's game, and the International Tennis Federation, which runs the four majors, are trying to work out a fairer schedule.

If they can do that, it's going to help a lot of players have long and healthier careers.

Walking off centre court from the US Open last week after forfeiting to Cedric Pioline was probably the most disappointing moment of my career.

It was a very tough situation and it was a strange feeling to be leaving the tournament so soon after winning the past two years there.  I still don't know whether the way I handled everything was the right or the wrong way.  I put myself into a position where I thought I could win, despite the shoulder getting progressively worse.  By the end of the match, the pain in the shoulder was terrible and it was obvious I was going to do more damage if I stayed out there. But it was very tough to pull myself off that court.

When you're in a place where you've had some success and you feel comfortable, you tend to believe anything is possible.   It was particularly difficult having to tell Cedric that I couldn't continue in the match. Then being booed off by the crowd was extremely disappointing.

THE people who were booing obviously didn't understand the extent of the injury or how much the US Open means to me.  They clearly wanted the match to continue because they had paid their money to come in. And the match was good. I wished I could have gone on and won in the fifth, but it would have been pointless.

The crowd reaction was similar to what happened at the Australian Open in 1996 when the crowd got stuck into me after I hurt my wrist against Mauricio Hadad.  The shoulder problem and the circumstances this time were probably more severe. Even when I woke up the following day, it was still very weak.

Part of the problem is that I've dropped off in my body-strengthening gym work this year because I've been playing so much. Normally, I would go to the gym three or four times a week in between on-court training. This year, I have averaged a visit once every 10 days.  The feeling of walking out of the US Open as a first round loser and driving back to Manhattan was a strong contrast to the past two years when I've been able to have a winner's party.

This year we got back to the hotel and walked across the street and had some pizza and a few Dark and Stormies, a Bermudan concotion, as about 10 or 15 of us just talked things over.  The strange aspect to the injury was how good the shoulder felt going into the Open. It was scary that it could break down so quickly.