Bud Collins

MELBOURNE, Australia - Is this the year that Roger Federer assails the virtually unassailable in tennis -- that being a calendar Grand Slam?

Unassailable for the last 37 years anyway. It's been so long since Rod Laver did it in 1969, traveling the quintessential quadrilateral -- the Grand Slam -- that the concept seems almost unimaginable.

The journey, as traditional, begins in Melbourne, at Rod Laver Arena in fact, and if top-heavy favorite Federer doesn't win the Australian Open, you can forget about a calendar Grand Slam for another year.

Somebody will win the first major of the year Down Under, of course, but unless it's Federer can you imagine any other player continuing on to conquer Paris, London and the New York in the other majors this season?

A Federer loss seems as likely as the U.S. getting out of debt. Laver himself, 66, who also Slammed in 1962, believes that Federer has a decent shot of following in his sneaker steps.

“Federer is a great player, no doubt about it. He does everything you need, and smoothly. With some luck -- which you need here and there -- he has the stuff to get a Grand Slam. And more power to him. I admire his game, and the way he carries himself,” Laver said.

With a break or two, Federer, the Swiss who doesn't miss -- hardly ever any way -- might have done it last year. In Melbourne he bungled a match point in the semifinals against No. 12 Marat Safin, who succeeded him as Australian Open champion, and was beaten in the French semifinals by El Nino, No. 2 Rafael Nadal.

Then Federer went on to retain the Wimbledon and U.S. titles. Perhaps fortunate for No. 1 Federer, if not the tournament itself, is the hors de combat status of the Russian and the Spaniard.

Injuries (Safin, knee, Nadal, foot) will keep the two from playing in Melbourne.

Hewitt chases elusive title
If anybody thirsts as mightily for this title as a desert straggler seeking an oasis, it's the last of the Aussie Mohicans, Lleyton Hewitt.

On behalf of his island of Australia, he's fighting the “Curse of Eddo,” striving to raise the Aussies from the dead. Mark (Eddo) Edmondson in 1976 was the most recent of the homeboys to capture the Australian Open championship.

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Who could have imagined that his feat would be celebrating a 30th anniversary of futility in a land so blessed with all-time greats? But where have they gone? Eddo even has trouble remembering how he did it.

Hewitt, the feisty, ferocious one, grew up revering such compatriot champs as Laver, Ken Rosewall, John Newcombe, and Roy Emerson, yearning to succeed them Down Under. And he has won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, and he even made the final in Melbourne a year ago -- the first Aussie to last that long since Patrick Cash lost to Mats Wilander in 1988.

But once in the final, Hewitt was mowed down by Marat Safin, 6-2, 6-4, 6-4. His country, sadly, is tapped out of talent. How can a guy be No. 3 on the planet yet be considered a flop?

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