KEY POINTS:
Through all the considerable statistics which surround an event like the Australian Open, one rises like a boil about to burst - it is almost two years since an Australian, any Australian, won a professional tennis tournament on the world circuit.
The last time was Lleyton Hewitt's win at a Las Vegas tournament in March, 2007. That the world tennis power that was Australia has become something less than a power is not news but the angst surrounding it is.
This focus on the weaknesses of Australian tennis is also not unique; much the same thing happens on this side of the Tasman annually; about the time of the ASB Classic and the Heineken Open.
It must be the scourge of tennis administrators - while they do their best to raise the profile of the sport and to encourage the next batch of world-class athletes, suddenly public and media are wondering aloud what happened to Australian/New Zealand tennis.
It is a self-perpetuating perception - where are the Fairlies, the Paruns, the Lewises, the Simpsons, the Stevens that made New Zealand tennis so keenly followed and who helped give it a foothold on the world stage?
That same question has been asked with increasing volume in Australia. Hewitt, still on his way back from injury, is the top-ranked Australian man at 74 in the world. Next is Chris Guccione (101) with next-ranked Peter Luczak third at 155. In women's tennis, Samantha Stosur is ranked 51 and Casey Dellacqua 52 but the next Australian is Jessica Moore, ranked 136.
So, three ranked in the top 100 and none in the top 50, although Hewitt's ranking was affected by his injury layoff last year. Back in the '70s, there were nearly 20 Australians in the top 100 for each gender, many of them in the top 50. In 1998, there were eight at 100 or better in the world rankings.
Argentina, in comparison, has 10 players in the men's top 100 alone and four of them in the top 50 (although only one in the women's top 100).
Hewitt's slide has heightened fears that Australia's decline as a tennis power has been masked by the little Aussie battler's prowess and fighting qualities over the years. Of the 34 singles titles won by Australians since 1998, Hewitt has won 25 of them.
It's a scenario which has disturbed former world top 10 player John
Alexander whose criticism has centred on the desperate state in which Australian tennis finds itself and who blamed lack of tennis facilities.
"These are the most desperate straits of participation in international tennis," Alexander told the Sydney Morning Herald. "We're getting close to the end of the road unless we can turn it around.
"This has been a long time coming but it's a fundamental breakdown in the structure of tennis in Australia."
Alexander pointed to the loss of Australia's neighbourhood tennis courts as residential development encroached on land normally set aside for backyard tennis courts.
"The doorstep of blame must lie at the loss of tennis courts," he said. "We have had a monumental loss of courts and a decrease in participation and opportunity for young people to take up the sport."
However, it seems a trifle far-fetched to land all of Australia's tennis troubles at the feet of real estate development. After all the revolution in tennis in countries like France, Spain, Russia, the Balkan states and South America has had precious little to do with backyard tennis courts - because there weren't many.
Other observers put the key problem down to much more basic elements - like a thirst for success (or lack of it). They say little was done to ensure the ongoing health of the game when players at the top - like Hewitt, Mark Philippoussis and Pat Rafter - were disguising the dearth of upcoming talent beneath them.
"We're seeing all the European players really hungry to win," former Australian Open, US Open and Wimbledon champion of the 1950s, Ashley Cooper told the Australian newspaper recently.
"It seems our lifestyles are too easy here. I don't know enough about it but particularly the eastern European kids, they'll walk on glass to get to the top. So our younger players have got to realise hard work is essential and they've really got to commit - and want to do it."
That gels with something Australian tennis great John Newcombe said, when asked what he felt was the problem with Australian tennis: "When Australian players are training, they think they are giving 100 per cent but they are only giving 60 per cent.'
The truth is probably somewhere in between. There may be something to the Alexander theory about lack of courts leading to kids taking up other sporting or leisure options these days and Cooper is part of a long-term plan that Tennis Australia hopes will realise more competitive international players by 2012.
"I don't know if there's one main cause for it," he said. "I think there are a few reasons. Today we are probably seeing the result of what didn't happen 8-10 years ago.
"When things were going generally well for Australia tennis, I don't think there was enough work put into the promotion of the sport and getting young athletes involved. I believe that is still our biggest problem."
So Tennis Australia is going right down to local level for talent identification, with more than 6000 kids identified as being talented and placed into clubs so their progress can be monitored and nurtured. They are sent to regional competitions and, if they show promise, then go too one of Australia's five tennis academies with professional coaches and elite training environment.
They are also pinning their hopes on new facilities in places like Queensland and the new Tennyson complex there - with a lack of polished facilities one of the key issues in failing to attract players, parents and kids.
Whether it works or not is another matter, of course, and it is only fair to point out that Australian tennis is not the only one on the slide. However, it is the most obvious as even the Americans - whose game has also been struggling in recent years, especially with the lack of interest displayed at times by Serena and Venus Williams - have eight men in the top 100 (five in the top 50) and four in the top 100 of the women.
So there will be a deal of interest in the Australian youth who have been given wildcards to the Australian Open - Queensland 16-year-olds Bernard Tomic and Monika Wejnert and emerging Victorians Olivia Rogowska, 17, and Sam Groth, 21. Australian Open junior winner Brydan Klein, 19, and Isabella Holland, 17, also have discretionary wildcards, joining Jelena Dokic and Colin Ebelthite, who won the Open playoffs.
Tomic was a certainty after taking six games off Spaniard Fernando Verdasco in Brisbane recently while Wejnert won a tournament in Perth late last year, beating players ranked higher than her - although to expect such newcomers to do anything more than take a first step on their road to whatever awaits them would be unreasonable.
It is unreasonable, too, to expect Hewitt to carry the burden of Australian tennis (that a local has not won their own tournament for 30 years) again yet that is exactly what is happening. Hewitt, still only 27, is resigned to the expectations as no one else has risen through the ranks to relieve him of the load.
But maybe, just maybe, as he is on the recovery path the expectations may be a little less onerous yet and Hewitt, in spite of his low ranking and comparative lack of match practice, still believes he rates alongside the likes of Andy Roddick and James Blake as the best of the rest behind Open big guns Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.
