Australia hires former Spanish claycourt specialist Mantilla

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Australia has hired former Spanish claycourt specialist Felix Mantilla and will open a training base in Barcelona in an effort to boost its sagging world tennis fortunes.

With Lleyton Hewitt's season-ending hip injury and subsequent surgery, Australia has four rookies in its six-man squad to play Chile in a Davis Cup World Group playoff this weekend on clay at Antofagasta.

A loss to the heavily favored Chileans would leave the 28-time Davis Cup champions stranded in the second-tier Asia-Oceania group for at least another year.

As well, Hewitt has emerged as the only singles mainstay of the team for the past several years with the retirements of Pat Rafter and Mark Philippoussis from the ATP tour.

On Thursday, Tennis Australia said it wanted to emulate the Spanish approach, which it said had yielded 21 current top 100 players, including eight men in the top 50 and five in the top 20, including No. 1 Rafael Nadal.

Spain, led by Nadal, take on the defending champion Americans in a Davis Cup semifinal this weekend.

Since finishing his injury-shortened playing career, Mantilla, a former top 10 player who won 10 tour titles and reached the semifinals of the French Open, has worked with some of the top Spanish juniors.

"The expertise Felix will bring to our players will be world-class," Craig Tiley, Tennis Australia's director of tennis, said. "This is no part-time hobby for him. He has given an unequivocal, unconditional full-time commitment and will travel with several of our top younger players."

Tiley also said a new claycourt facility in Barcelona, where Mantilla will mostly be based, will be added to its Canberra and London training bases for elite Australian players.

"I wanted the job as it was a full-time position and I know that's what it takes to develop a young player," Mantilla was quoted as saying in a Tennis Australia statement.