Tomic, though, was inevitably drawn into the subject of the conditioning he will need to help him through a testing first round against Brazillian Thomaz Bellucci in what are forecast to be Monday's 30-plus temperatures. Asked to rate his fitness out of 10, Tomic replied:  "I think honestly, if I can say, there are 50 people fitter than me outside of the top 70 to 150 in the world. There are some players not as fit as me inside the top 10, 15 in the world.

"Will fitness help them? I don't think so. I feel obviously the big servers, Isner, Raonic, Kyrgios, Karlovic are there. I don't think fitness can help them. Fitness has got me ... I've based my sport, what I've got in my career, with my serve, my ability to play tennis. I think there are many fitter players than me that are outside the top 100 in the world. I think we can skip this question."

Bellucci, though, will make him work for a first-up victory that would be Tomic's eighth in nine attempts at the home grand slam where he has reached the third round three times and the fourth round twice. But consistency is one thing, he says. "I'd like to go a step further, play better."

The current campaign, in which he is seeded to collide with No.7 Marin Cilic in the third round, starts against a baseline slugger, ranked 62nd, who beat Tomic 6-2, 6-2 when they met most recently, in Shenzhen last year. Their first two career meetings had been split along surface lines: Bellucci winning on clay and Tomic on hardcourt.

"Yeah, he's very intense," said the Australian No.2. "He's beaten a lot of top players. I think he's reached almost top 20 in the world, won multiple titles. For me he's a top 10, 15 player on clay. It's going to be tough. His ranking now is 60, 70. He's one of those players, where he's playing well, he's not an easy player to play. I have to come into this match 100 per cent from the first point. That's going to be very important for me."

Despite his own decline from 17th to 27th in the past 12 months, Tomic's goal remains a place in the top 10, and to remain there "for many years". The last, he says, was "pretty solid", given that injuries prevented him from playing a complete season, and drew the curtain after an abdominal retirement in Shanghai in October.

"I think there are a lot of good players in the top 20, top 30 that are top-10 players. You got to get there. You got to earn it. Whether it comes like that or in four, five years, you know, you obviously are going to get your chance. If you're consistent, you work hard, do the right things, you have a big chance at this.

"There are, like I said, many, many players from top 20, 30 in the world that are amazing tennis players, potentially play better than some of the guys in the top 10. But it's a different game. You have to be more consistent, you have to work for this. It takes a year. It doesn't take three tournaments."

Unusually, Tomic has arrived at Melbourne Park having not just lost more than four kilograms in just over a week, but without an official tournament match win this season, having followed a first-round loss at the Brisbane International with appearances in the Fast4 exhibition and then two brief outings at the Kooyong Classic. He defended his decision not to contest the ATP event in Sydney, where he won his maiden tour title in 2013 and reached the final the following year.

"I chose to play a few different events as opposed to playing Sydney like I played in the past four, five years. So I feel like, yeah, Brisbane I lost to a former world No. 3 [David Ferrer]. It was a tough match. I take a lot from it. I went down to Sydney, played the exhibition. Same as Kooyong. Different sort of matches, I was working on a few things.

"I don't really rate these matches as winning or losing, Sydney and Kooyong. That's not important to me. What's important for me is to get out on the court, do my thing and work on a few things I needed to do. And just to be ready mentally for the Open. I played very good in my past here where I haven't been prepared for tournaments. Sometimes it happens just like that. Sometimes I prepared well and not been as ready.

"But that's tennis. Players work hard, try their arse off, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you're less prepared, and you do well."