Father Agassi a main contender

One theory has it that Andre Agassi has changed too many nappies over the past two-and-a-half months to claim a third successive Australian Open title, but writing off his chances of winning, especially on the grounds that fatherhood will have taken its toll, should be done warily.

It may be convenient for those looking to discount Agassi's prospects over the next two weeks to cite the American's hyper-elation over the birth last autumn of his and Steffi Graf's son, Jaden Gil - 'I have this small gift from God at home. I just have to look at him the whole day' - as a reason for his not having the necessary focus on the year's first Grand Slam. It is just as likely, though, that becoming such a doting parent will galvanise this most emotional of men. Melbourne does, after all, seem to have this effect.

Fathers winning Grand Slams may not be usual - in recent years it has been done only eight times, on three occasions by Jimmy Connors and once by Pat Cash, Andres Gomez, Boris Becker, Petr Korda and Yevgeny Kafelnikov - but three Australian men's champions in the past six years have returned home to gurgling infants: Becker in 1996, Korda in 1998 and Kafelnikov in 1999.

Despite his success in Melbourne six years ago, Becker believes Agassi will find it difficult. After becoming a father, the German says, 'your main focus is for your child and your wife, and tennis becomes secondary. It's a fact. It changes your priorities'. Agassi, though, thinks he can still make an impact, and history shows that when he thinks he can do something he invariably does it. 'I'll do my best to balance everything,' he says. 'My goal has always been to play this game as good as I can, as long as I can.'

The birthday that may in fact be more relevant to Papa Andre's chances than Jaden Gil's, which is 26 October 2001, is Agassi's own, 29 April 1970, which means that the shaven-headed Las Vegan is one of the senior citizens of the men's tour.

He won his first title 15 years ago and has been stacking them up ever since. He is, arguably, the greatest counter-puncher the game has ever seen (Connors would be sure to argue) with an extraordinary hand-eye coordination that enables him to lock on to and then deal with the swiftest serves. It is this that has enabled him to keep going longer than the more athletic players who can no longer locate top gear and the mighty biffers whose ball-and-sockets are starting to wear out.

In addition to his economy of style, Agassi has managed to keep going because of his obvious devotion to the game. He estimates that to counteract the advancing years he has to improve his performance between three and five per cent annually, 'otherwise I'm goin' backwards'. Very few players, having passed the threshold of their thirtieth birthdays, can summon the commitment required to maintain that sort of improvement.

As recently as 1999-2000, the ever-young Agassi reached four successive Grand Slam finals, and since that sequence he has also retained the Australian Open title at Melbourne Park a year ago.

But for the rest of last year, if you discount Goran Ivanisevic's freak annexation of the Wimbledon title, it was the smoke from the game's young guns that filled the air. They had been threatening to take charge in 2000, and finally did so in 2001 with the 20-year-old Australian Lleyton Hewitt becoming the youngest male to head the world rankings just before the year's end. Close behind him, Switzerland's Roger Federer, 20, and the American teenager Andy Roddick looked nearly as menacing. This time, you suspect, Agassi will have had to find at least an eight per cent improvement. Too much, even if Australia's bookies are making him the 5-1 favourite.

Hewitt, who won his first Grand Slam title in New York last September, would almost certainly have been favourite had it not been for an attack of chickenpox earlier this month. It is surely asking too much of him to successfully complete his convalescence and cope with seven opponents in the space of 14 days.

Which may leave the way open for the extravagantly talented Federer to carry off his first Grand Slam title. He has shown he has the nerve to win big matches having ended Pete Sampras's unbeaten sequence of 31 matches at Wimbledon last July. He may now be ready to go all the way to the tape.

Those talking up Tim Henman's chances will no doubt point out that he beat Federer after the Swiss player's win over Sampras at Wimbledon. But the British number one has never performed well at Melbourne Park, which is why the choice of champion almost certainly lies between Papa Andre and the young ones.