By: Christopher Clarey

Rafael Nadal has long made a custom of sounding more worried than everybody else. But this time, there seemed to be legitimate cause for consternation all around.

After a rough patch in 2014, full of aches and pains and absentee slips, he arrived Down Under without his appendix and without a victory this year after blowing a lead in his opening match of the season in Doha, Qatar, against the German journeyman Michael Berrer.

Berrer was merely the latest lesser man to get the best of Nadal, one of the greatest champions and relentless competitors in tennis history.

But there would be no more upheaval on Monday at the Australian Open. Facing a familiar, older foe in Mikhail Youzhny, Nadal played a shaky opening game and was then anything but shaky the rest of the way, romping to an impressive 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 victory.

Youzhny, at 32 and coming back from health problems of his own, is not what he was. But Nadal certainly did a fine impression of what he was: moving and striking the ball with great energy and precision, finding the corners with his left-handed serve and facing just one break point, which he saved with an overhead.

A number of exchanges were emblematic, but one stood out midway through the second set when Youzhny hit a sharply angled return to Nadal’s backhand side and Nadal was still quick enough to sprint all the way around it and whip a forehand winner instead.

By the end, it seemed time that Nadal go back to being more worried than the rest of us. “It’s no surprise to me,” Youzhny said later. “Journalists talk about his health and his head, but the players know that he already won it here. And I think he’s had a good preparation and enough time to improve his game for the Grand Slam.”

He should now have more time to improve his game before the bigger challenges to come. Youzhny, a former US Open semifinalist who has beaten Nadal four times, was clearly a threat if Nadal was not in fine form. But Nadal’s next opponent will be Tim Smyczek, a 27-year-old American qualifier ranked 112th.

Cool experience

Smyczek, not surprisingly, knows a great deal more about Nadal than Nadal knows about him.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Smyczek said. “It’s going to be a really cool experience. You don’t have too high expectations going into it, other than it’s going to be an opportunity for me to play a guy I’ve looked up to for a very long time.”

Was it more Nadal’s achievements or his character that he admired? “Both,” Smyczek said. “He’s one of the nicest guys in the locker room. He’ll always say hello to you, and he just seems like a really good guy, and obviously it’s hard to argue with his achievements, however many French Opens he’s won.”

“Nine,” said a reporter, helpfully. “Yeah, right,” Smyczek said.

Nadal also has won two US Opens and two Wimbledons, but he has won, for now, only one Australian Open. Rod Laver Arena, where he shined against Youzhny on Monday, has generated a particularly deep mix of emotions for him through the years. It is the place where he fought past his Spanish compatriot Fernando Verdasco in a grueling semifinal in 2009 and then reduced Roger Federer to tears when he beat him in the final. It is the place where he hustled and tussled for nearly six hours before losing the longest men’s Grand Slam singles final of the Open era to Novak Djokovic in 2012.

It is the place where he beat Federer convincingly once more in the semifinals last year, only to be upset in the final by the longtime Swiss No.2 and big underdog, Stan Wawrinka.

That final, a match in which Nadal’s back troubled him more than he conceded at the time, set the tone for his challenging season in which he would miss the US Open with a wrist injury and the eight-man World Tour Finals because of an appendectomy.

“I needed a few more matches in Qatar but that didn’t happen,” Nadal said of his loss to the 127th-ranked, 34-year-old Berrer. “After the rough period of time with the injuries, you arrive here with doubts, and this first match was tough mentally for me. It was my first big test of the season in a five-set match, a Grand Slam and in a very important place for me. So I’m very happy for that, and I hope this match will give me confidence to play well next round.”