Last year, the Australian Open snuck up on me. There’s a number of reasons for that, which I wrote about last year. One of those is that it’s often lost here in America amid the many sporting events taking place during January (NFL playoffs, college basketball, NBA, NHL, etc.) Last year I actually didn’t realize it had started until a few days into tournament play.

That shouldn’t happen this year, as I saw promos on ESPN last night about the upcoming grand slam. The 2007 Australian starts Monday in Sydney and ESPN will be televising opening round matches beginning Sunday night. I’m not sure how excited I am about professional tennis right now. With Agassi retiring last year, I’ve lost the one player that I truly enjoyed watching and rooting for.

As for other American players, two of the best that I’ve seen the most of are Andy Roddick and James Blake. I’ve never taken a liking to Roddick. I think he’s been somewhat of a punk at times, too cocky and arrogant. He at least seemed to focus more on his game when Jimmy Connors became his coach last year and fared well at the U.S. Open, despite losing to Federer. James Blake I like, but I’m rarely disappointed much when he loses. If he does well, great, but I don’t know if I’m really a fan of his.

Roger Federer has been the best player in recent years and has a fantastic game. Some say he will be the best ever by the time he’s done, and that very well could be true. I like Federer, and he is fun to watch as well.

I like Marat Safin, but he’s so volatile you never know what you’ll get. I also enjoyed what little I saw of Marcos Baghdatis at last year’s U.S. Open, but it’s really the only match I saw him play. It just happened to be a great one when he lost in 5 to Agassi. But he seemed like a guy I could cheer for.

However, the guy I’m most interested in now is probably Spain’s Raphael Nadal. For some reason, I didn’t care for him when he first came on the scene a few years ago (maybe it was the shorts.) But I enjoyed watching the Federer-Nadal matches at the French and Wimbledon last year, and found myself wanting him to win. He has a great game as well and is more entertaining to watch than Federer. I look forward to watching more of him, and he may be the guy to take Agassi’s place on my favorite active player list in the coming year. He and Federer appear to be at the top by themselves, and I’ll be anxious to see how the year goes.

So, I’ll be checking out the Australian these next couple of weeks. That is, if I don’t forget about it.