US Open Betting / Ralph Ellis / 08 July 2008 /

Ralph Ellis wonders if the man in the cardigan is losing his appetite for hard work.

It was Jim Courier who named the key talent required to be number one in the world at tennis. He and Andre Agassi were the coming stars, but while the flambouyant kid from Las Vegas was grabbing the headlines, the dour Courier was flying round the world collecting titles. It was 1992, and he was US Open, Australian and French champion all at the same time.

Somebody asked him what he felt about the general view that Agassi was far more talented. "Let me tell you," he said. "There is more than one type of talent. There is the talent to strike a ball, the talent to hit forehands and backhands - but the most important one of all is the one I've got and that is the talent for hard work."

Courier was 22 at the time - exactly the same age that Rafael Nadal is now. And it wasn't a surprise that when a couple of years later he lost the appetite to rush from the practice court to the gym, and then out for a long run, then go back to the practice court again, he lost his number one ranking too. Pete Sampras emerged on the scene (funnily enough aged 22), and stayed there until he too lost the will to do the work.

I thought of Courier's quote as I read Mike Dickson's summing up of Wimbledon fortnight in this morning's Daily Mail. Dickson spent some time covering cricket for the Mail, but tennis has always been his greatest passion and he writes with depth and authority. He's picked up this morning exactly what has changed about Roger Federer this year. "There was an element of price coming before a fall in his demise," he writes. "When you reign supreme it is all very well sitting there in your special cardigan with gold buttons, wearing a cap with your gold braided initials and having special golden trim on your shoes. When you have been royally stuffed by your rival in Paris and gone three majors without winning it does not look quite so clever. Federer has also developed a taste for celebrity pals. Musical couple Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani were in his box, Anna Wintour put in an appearance during the fortnight, and he has a mutual love-in with Tiger Woods. He needs to watch his focus."

Despite that run of defeats in Melbourne, Paris and now SW19, Federer remains [2.52] favourite to put it right in the US Open at the end of next month. That has to be worth laying, whether or not you then choose to back Nadal to win his third big title in a row at a generous [3.9]. The Spaniard's odds have surely only slipped because of doubts at his fitness after the Herculean efforts of the last six weeks, when he's won in Paris then Queen's and at the All England club. And okay he's pulled out of a tournament in Stuttgart this week because of the state of his knees.

But he still made the effort to get up at 6am on Monday morning to fly to Germany and deliver that decision to the tournament sponsors in person, rather than send a sicknote as most top stars would have done. And that suggests a couple of weeks rest will have him fine and dandy to do the work again to head off to Flushing Meadows.

Five things you didn't know about the US Open

1. It was first held in 1881 at Newport Casino in Rhode Island and was anything but open - invited high society players only could attend.

2. It was played on grass at Forest Hills until 1975, then switched to an artificial clay court than to the current DecoTurf surface at Flushing Meadows in 1978

3. Jimmy Connors won it on all three surfaces

4. It's the only one of the Grand Slam tournaments to have a tiebreaker in the fifth set

5. Federer's current achievement of four successive titles is the best of the modern era. Richard Sears won the first seven tournaments in a row.

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