Dellacqua injury-free, aiming for top 32

Australia's Casey Dellacqua has declared herself injury-free and ready to break into
the world's top 32 ahead of her playing comeback at Perth's Hopman Cup.

Dellacqua, who will partner Lleyton Hewitt at the $1 million mixed teams event,
experienced both the highs and the lows of professional tennis in 2008.
The 23-year-old, currently ranked 53 in the world, shot to prominence when she
reached the fourth round of the Australian Open, and her world ranking rocketed to
39 following third-round appearances at Roland Garros and Wimbledon.
But a shoulder injury wrecked the second half of her year, sending her to the
sidelines in September when she could no longer bare the pain.
Such was the seriousness of the injury, Dellacqua has been forced to change her
serving action to ensure the complaint doesn't resurface again.
"I missed it," Dellacqua said of her time spent away from the game, which included
an eight-week stint where she didn't even pick up a racquet.
"By the end of it, I was pretty keen to get back on court and now that I'm back on
court I want to stay there.
"I've had a great pre-season.
"Unfortunately my 2008 year was stopped short because of my shoulder injury but I
have been back on court and been hitting a lot of tennis balls.
"This change in serve is just something I had to do for longevity in my career.
"I want to play tennis for a lot longer and I just had too much pain when I was
serving, so we've changed a few little things for the better - for a better serve
and for my shoulder."
Following her breakthrough '08 campaign, Dellacqua said her goal for 2009 was to
break into the world's top 32, which would guarantee the left-hander a seeding at
the grand slams.
"I think that's pretty realistic," Dellacqua said.
"This first half of the year is pretty important for me because I did quite well at
the beginning of last year.
"Obviously there's different expectations on me this year than there was last year.
"I put a fair bit of pressure on myself anyway and set pretty high standards so I
think most of the pressure is going to come from myself."
Australia open their Hopman Cup campaign against Germany's pairing of Nicolas Kiefer
and Sabine Lisicki on Monday.
Dellacqua and Hewitt then confront the Slovak Republic (Dominik Hrbaty and Dominika
Cibulkova) on Tuesday before taking on the top-seeded USA (James Blake and Meghann
Shaughnessy) on Thursday.
Dellacqua said she was looking forward to partnering Hewitt, who himself is on the
comeback trail following hip surgery in August.
"I definitely feel I can learn from him and I'm going to thoroughly enjoy getting
out on the court and playing with him," Dellacqua said.