AUSTRALIAN OPEN
Venue: Melbourne Park Date: 18-31 January
Coverage: Every Andy Murray match live on BBC 1 or 2
Daily from 0830 GMT: live on BBC Red Button/website, 5 Live sports extra
Daily from 0000 GMT: text commentary on BBC Sport website

By Caroline Cheese

For a player whose self-belief is one of his greatest strengths, it was a stark admission.

"I have had under-confidence and things in the head... You have to accept problems and you have to come back. I am trying."

It is less than a year since Rafael Nadal won his sixth Grand Slam title with an epic five-set win over Roger Federer at the Australian Open.

But in that short time, he has gone from a player tipped by Andre Agassi to challenge for tennis's holy grail of a calendar Grand Slam to one struggling for confidence, and dogged by questions over his fitness.

Three defeats and an early exit at November's ATP World Tour Finals in London begged the question: is the Rafa-lution over?

NADAL v FEDERER Nadal in 2008 82 wins, 93 matches Eight titles, 10 finals Federer in 2008 66 wins, 81 matches Four titles, eight finals Nadal in 2009 65 wins, 79 matches Five titles, eight finals Federer in 2009 61 wins, 73 matches Four titles, seven finals Head to head 2008: Nadal 4-0 Federer 2009: Nadal 1-1 Federer

The first five months of 2010 could well provide the answer.

Over the same period last season, Nadal was simply phenomenal: victory in Melbourne began an astonishing run of just three defeats in 44 matches and five titles.

That came after a superhuman 2008 in which the Mallorcan claimed eight titles in 10 finals, 82 wins in 93 matches, and, the icing on the cake, an Olympic gold medal.

It came at a cost though.

A shock defeat by Robin Soderling at the French Open in May was followed by a two-month lay-off with tendonitis in both knees that left him unable to defend his Wimbledon crown.

His parents' divorce, breaking up a famously tight-knit family who live on different floors of the same house in Mallorca, left the 23-year-old admitting that he felt physically and mentally unprepared for the challenge of the tour.

"My parents' divorce made an important change in my life. It affected me. After that, when I can't play Wimbledon, it was tough. For one month I was outside the world."

In Nadal's absence, Federer made hay, reclaiming his world number one ranking as he won a first French Open and followed that by regaining the Wimbledon title.

Nadal returned to action in August, but is yet to win a title and has beaten just one top-10 player.

As he prepares to defend his Australian Open title, Nadal knows a bad run could see him slip down the top 10 as the mound of ranking points he earned in the first half of 2009 drop off.

Yet he also knows that playing too much tennis exacerbated his injuries.

606: DEBATE I personally think Rafa is playing better tennis than last year Osiris

He has already stated he is determined to avoid the mistakes of last year when he had knee problems but "decided to play anyway".

Some observers believe Nadal is carrying less muscle bulk in an attempt to reduce the pressure on those troublesome knees - although the player himself has laughed this off.

However, his schedule, which many believe needs trimming in order to secure his future, looks likely to remain unchanged.

After playing in London in November, Nadal helped Spain win the Davis Cup, leaving him with an off-season of precisely 25 days before he began his season in Abu Dhabi on 1 January.

Under ATP rules, he is obliged to play all 10 Masters 1000 tournaments, with a further six lower level events counting towards his world ranking.

Of course, he could decide to sacrifice ranking points by dropping one or two of those lower-level events.

But the most obvious candidates are Barcelona, which comes in the middle of the gruelling clay-court season but is where Nadal is a five-times champion and a huge crowd favourite, and Queen's, which is the Spaniard's only opportunity to play on grass before Wimbledon.

"We have a schedule that forces you to play from the first week of January until December, making it very difficult to achieve your goals," Nadal said recently.

As he embarks on what could be a crucial period in his career, Nadal says he has only one goal: "To play better. Ranking-wise, number one or number two doesn't matter. Fitness-wise, I'm 100% now and I'm hitting the ball harder."

And of course, should he need any inspiration he could do worse than look at the man who now sits above him in the world rankings.

Federer ended last year's Australian Open sobbing after seeing a record-equalling 14th major title slip out of his grasp.

Two Grand Slam crowns, taking him past Pete Sampras's all-time record, wasn't a bad way to bounce back - and that was despite playing 20 fewer matches than Nadal did in his spectacular 2008.

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