TENNIS/Australian Open:When Andy Murray played Rafael Nadal in the fourth round here last year, more than 15,000 Australian fans left the Rod Laver Arena in the early hours of the morning convinced they had seen the second best player in the world.
And it was not the Spaniard. True, Murray lost, yet during the course of his 6-7, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 defeat he played the sort of multi-faceted, sublime tennis against the French Open champion that left nobody in doubt that here was a special talent.
It is a view that continues to be held throughout the tennis world, enhanced by the young Scot's electric start to the season in Doha, leaving many convinced that the next fortnight may see him make his expected breakthrough at the highest level.
This will be Murray's ninth major since he played his first as an 18-year-old at Wimbledon in 2005 and he has already reached the last 16 in all but the French Open. Add to this his continuing physical development and, barring a similar sort of wrist injury to that which struck him down out of the blue last spring, there seems no reason to doubt he will reach his first major quarter-final or better this year, and quite possibly here. The new Plexicushion surface, more akin to the courts at Flushing Meadows, should suit him more than the sticky Rebound Ace, while a gruelling off-season regime has left him fitter than he has ever been.
The Australian Open favours those who have worked assiduously during the off-season. Nobody trained harder during December than Andre Agassi, pushing himself up hill and down dale under the Nevada sun, and he duly won four times here, three of them in the autumn of his career, while during the last 10 years seven players - Marcelo Rios of Chile, Sweden's Thomas Enqvist and Thomas Johansson, Arnaud Clement of France, Germany's Rainer Schuttler, Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus and, last year, Chile's Fernando Gonzalez - have all reached their one and only major final at this tournament. It has been the shock of the fit and the shock of the new and Murray, who plays the Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the first round, scores on both these counts.
Some at home will already be beginning to groan, or mutter darkly of false Tim Henman dawns. Effectively, since last year's retirement of Henman and Greg Rusedski, Britain has become a one-man tennis nation, with Murray our only singles representative, man or woman, in the world's top 100. It is a shocking statistic and it would hardly be surprising if expectations began to outrun reality as far as Murray was concerned.
Maybe they always will, although it is crystal clear that the Scot has the ability to play the sort of tennis that flies in the face of the modern baseline biff and bash. For this reason alone it would be wonderful to see him succeed at the highest level and to buck the robotic march of the power hitters.
This is not to ignore the consummate skills and grace of Roger Federer which, in bringing him 12 major titles over the last four and half years, have raised the game to fresh heights, while establishing a sequence of success at this level that may never be duplicated in the men's game.
Were he to win his fourth Australian Open title two weeks tomorrow, Federer would become the first man in the Open era to take this title in three successive years, while it is a sobering thought that since Russia's Marat Safin won here in 2005, Federer and Nadal between them have shut the door on all other rivals at his level, albeit that the Spaniard's successes in the majors have all been on the French clay.
For the present there is a considerable shadow over Nadal. Since pushing Federer so close in last year's Wimbledon final he has struggled to overcome knee problems which his uncle and coach, Toni, described towards the end of last year as "very serious", the inference being that they were career threatening. The 21-year-old Spanish phenomenon quickly denied this, though he admitted to being extremely frustrated.
Further doubts were raised in India last week when he was pulverised in the Chennai Open final by Mikhail Youzhny of Russia. Should Nadal succeed here, and he has never progressed beyond the quarter-finals, it is possible, if Federer were to lose early, that he could replace the Swiss as the world number one. It seems unlikely, even though the reigning champion missed the pre-Open Kooyong exhibition event (severe stomach upset).
There were moments last year when Federer displayed a little more vulnerability than his many admirers had become accustomed to, although this was not true at the highest level of the majors when, for the second successive year, he won three of the four. His concentration may have wavered a little on the bread-and-butter tour but Federer exactly knows his priorities. Equalling or overtaking Pete Sampras's record of 14 majors will not get any easier.
That said, looking for a possible alternative title winner here is difficult. Novak Djokovic made the most progress of the new generation last year, reaching the semi-finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon before losing to Federer in the US Open final. The Serb, one week younger than the 20-year-old Murray, is not short on self-belief and, above all, possesses the sort of mental strengths that, as yet, are untested in Murray. Djokovic has won all his matches against the Scot, though they could not meet here for a fourth time unless both get to the final.
Should Federer's illness have left him physically vulnerable, then the whole tournament could be thrown wide open and the scramble for the title take on the intensity of the numerous bush fires that break out at this time of the year. Time for Murray, the new Mr Cool, to step forward perhaps.
