Scratching the surface

PARIS -- Oh mon Dieu, there’s that Roger Federer again, back at the French Open, hitting practice balls, admonishing himself, sliding around sub-ingeniously on the red clay, bound probably for another dreary thud into Rafael Nadal’s biceps.

But look over there just a minute, just off the court while Federer hits with 50th-ranked Jose Acasuso on a warm Friday afternoon, for there stands possible, feasible help. There stands this one-human accumulation of red-clay wisdom.

There stands the Roland Garros sage and Palm Springs mainstay Jose Higueras, quietly observing, hugging a racket head, collecting loose balls, and we should all look so svelte at 55. We’ve all seen Federer coachless in swatches, and it’s worked swimmingly all over the globe, but here the king of the planet has reached age almost-27 and never won, so in April he dialed the 760 area code for assistance.

Higueras won 15 of his 16 singles titles on clay, annihilated Jimmy Connors in a quarterfinal here and reached the semifinals in 1982 and 1983.

He coached a small bale of will with the name Michael Chang and heard the 17-year-old Chang thank him in his 1989 title speech.

He coached Jim Courier’s dour diligence and heard the 20-year-old Courier say in the 1991 title speech, “I wouldn’t be standing here without you.”

A late-blooming Spaniard who would birth a desert tennis academy in California, Higueras has frequented Roland Garros for so long that he chats in French with security guards and claims to know everyone “over 60.”

Maybe he can pinpoint the nuance that’ll boost Federer up the yawning final rung.

Interrupted mid-hurry after the hitting session, Higueras first said he wouldn’t be saying much about his turn with Federer. Then he said, “Roger knows more than anybody about tennis. It’s just a matter of somebody else to talk to about tennis. Maybe exchange new ideas.”

Since 2005, the theme has pretty much ripened and rotted. The maestro Federer, ranked No. 1 pretty much since Louis XVI got guillotined from the top, has won all the other Grand Slam tournaments at least thrice each, but he can’t get this one, and he can’t get this one because the Nadal family of Mallorca, Spain, decided to have a child in 1986. Then the tyke proved so impenetrable on clay that he has won three straight years here and lost only one of 22 French Open sets in 2007.

Federer met Nadal in a 2005 semifinal and lost in four sets, met him in the 2006 final and lost in four sets, met him in the 2007 final and lost in four sets, the whole sequence so headbanging that it’s possible to forget to count Federer among the world’s better clay-court players.

“Well, it is stupid for me to say something about if Roger is a good clay-court player,” Nadal said before reeling off Federer’s lifetime results from Hamburg, Monte Carlo, Rome and Paris. “With his numbers, you are one of the best clay-court players.”

Federer just has this Mallorcan mountain in his way, so he consulted somebody from the Spanish mainland, from the southern village of Diezma.

They started remolding clay in mid-April, in Estoril, Portugal, where Federer won the title over No. 4-ranked Nikolay Davydenko. They continued in Monaco, where Federer lost a 7-5, 7-5 final to Nadal. Higueras went home after that but counseled by telephone during Rome -- a quarterfinal loss to Radek Stepanek -- and during Hamburg, a galling final loss, 7-5, 6-7 (3), 6-3, to Nadal.

Have they isolated any issues in Federer’s game? With secrecy prized, Federer’s answer to that might threaten world vagueness records.

“Well, the thing is we haven’t had much time, you know on the practice courts,” Federer said, soon adding, “But I think the important thing is to talk a lot, communication. And that’s why Estoril and Monaco were quite difficult, you know. Because he came in, I was playing matches every day, and, you know, he’s trying to tell you a few things, but he’s worried to sort of give advice. But then it might be bad advice, you know, so . . . “

It’s about “having a guy, you know, seeing it from a different angle,” Federer said. “Somebody you can discuss and talk about, you know, tactics and certain things. You know, if he sees something in my technique, you know, that is something that you can then work on in the practice sessions. That is something we really haven’t had a chance to look at.

“You know, if you’re down, sure, he can build you up. But I wasn’t really down, you know, since we’ve started working together, so that hasn’t come into play yet.”

Nadal, for one, finds reverberations implausible this soon. “In my opinion, it’s very difficult to change style from probably the best [player] of the history in three, four weeks,” he said. “So I don’t know if he can do it, but in my opinion, I believe it’s more a long work, not a work of two, three weeks. That’s my opinion.”

As Higueras aims to augment his long Paris tapestry -- he also advised Pete Sampras, Todd Martin, Sergi Bruguera, Carlos Moya and nowadays Robby Ginepri -- the ledger does show he can spot a clue within a match. The 1991 final between Courier and Andre Agassi saw Courier trail, 6-3, 3-1, before rain butted in as is custom this time of year, whereupon Higueras instructed Courier to back up on Agassi’s serve, whereupon Courier won in five sets.

“I think coaches are overrated, but this is very satisfying for me,” Higueras said that day.

“Basically, he’s taught me how to play tennis instead of just hitting the ball,” Courier said.

Federer long since knows how to play tennis, so he’ll hope Higueras might renovate his thinking or mend some unheeded glitch.

It would be a turn of tennis history for a veteran of the graying process who lost those two semifinals here to Guillermo Vilas and Mats Wilander because, Higueras said, “I didn’t have a big enough game.”

“You never get the feeling of winning any tournament unless you win it yourself,” Higueras said, “but obviously there’s a great feeling from being with somebody winning a big tournament for the first time.”

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The French Open

* When: Begins today. Women’s final, June 7; men’s final, June 8.

* Where: Roland Garros, Paris.

* Last year’s women’s winners: Singles: Justine Henin (Belgium). Doubles: Alicia Molik (Australia) and Mara Santangelo (Italy).

* Last year’s men’s winners: Singles: Rafael Nadal (Spain). Doubles: Mark Knowles (Bahamas) and Daniel Nestor (Canada).

* Prize money: Men’s singles, $8.45 million; women, $8.45 million.