The resurgence of Marat Safin - which was my pre-championship wish - is so good for the game that it was almost worth watching him dismantle the entire US Davis Cup team and more. It was almost as if we had forgotten how good the Russian is - and the scary thing is that he may be even better than ever.

Mentally, he seems to be tougher than he was before his lay-off. He wants it more and he dug so deep here. His re-emergence has further enriched the men's game which is in its healthiest state, in terms of competitiveness, since the early days of Sampras and Agassi, Courier and Chang in the mid-Nineties.

If Safin's new-found dedication is for real, there are going to be some great match-ups in the years ahead, not least with his rival in the men's final of the Australian Open, Roger Federer, who has it in him to be the greatest player who ever lived. It's a perfect contrast: the outright power of an unbelievable physical specimen like Safin against arguably the greatest striker of a ball in history in Federer. You watch Federer hit some shots and you wonder, "How did he even think of that shot?" We're talking about two incredibly talented guys here.

They say that Federer's emotional detachment could be his weakness. Now where have I heard that before? I vividly remember telling Pete Sampras to get more into it, get the crowd pumped up and he'd say, "Well, it's just not me". I thought it would prevent him from becoming a prolific winner, which just goes to show how wrong I was. He became mentally strong in his own way and the same is probably true of Federer.

You can definitely see a pecking order developing in the men's game and I would say the top group consists of five players: Federer, Safin, Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi and Juan Carlos Ferrero. The young Roddick still has things to learn on the court, but off it he proved himself the finished article here. I thought the way in which he handled defeat against Safin was first class. Here was a guy who finished the year as No 1 and had obviously expected to do better than he did but he took his setback on the chin. It made you feel good about the sport.

Then just behind them you have Lleyton Hewitt, who is trying to fight his way back to the top. I wouldn't discount him doing that. Another potential Slam winner is David Nalbandian, although I think everything else would have to fall into place for him to do that. On clay at least I would expect Guillermo Coria to be a contender. His physique is the only thing that could hold him back.

Agassi's best days may be numbered because of the effort he has to put out at a comparatively advanced age, but he brings the best out of the other guys. Safin, when he looks back, will take great pride from the way he came back in the last set of his semi-final against an in-form Agassi. I would be surprised if the Australian public have seen the last of the American. While he is playing this well I am sure he will want to come back.

I saw him in the locker room afterwards and he was a bit disappointed with himself. He felt he could have made some subtle adjustments to his game, like taking the ball early on a few occasions and trying to pull Safin off the court on the forehand side or to play a more defensive return and not allow Safin an opening. Minor things but it just showed what a great student of the game he is. Even then, he was giving credit to Safin.

Many people often ask what happened to Safin after that US Open win against Pete Sampras in 2000. I think he just enjoyed the fruits of his labour too much. When you play as well as he did then you expect it to happen regularly without having to work at it so hard, but the problem is you forget the amount of effort it took to get there. He also become a bigger scalp for other people. He wasn't willing to up the ante in terms of training and in this sport you have to work harder just to stand still.

And when you don't train so hard you start to feel injuries. The thing snowballs and soon you can't train hard and you start to lose confidence. But thanks to the efforts of his fitness trainer he's now back where he belongs.