ESPN Tennis

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Mardy Fish enters this week almost back to where he started before two wrist surgeries interrupted his upward trajectory in the rankings in 2005. He's holding steady at No. 25 -- a mere 316 notches above his nadir of exactly one year ago.

Fish calls it his "second-career career high."

"If I get back into the top 20 again, if I can best my career high from before [No. 17], it would be so much sweeter this time," said Fish, who reached at least the quarterfinals in his first three tournaments this year. He fell prey to eventual finalist Ivo Karlovic's monster serve here in the quarterfinals of the SAP Open last Friday and is playing in Memphis, Tenn., this week.

"It all came so fast in '03 and '04, having that success when I was 20, 21 years old," Fish said. "I worked hard to do that, but not nearly as hard as I am now."

His good early-season results are surprising in a couple of ways. Fish generally is a slow starter, but got his legs going by playing three matches in the Hopman Cup, an international mixed doubles competition in Perth, Australia, leading up to the year's first Grand Slam.

More interesting is the fact Fish is just weeks removed from completely reconstructing his forehand and tweaking his service motion, substantive changes that often are difficult to make for an established player.

Like a person pondering therapy of any kind, Fish said he had to be ready to listen. He took the initiative with coaches Todd Martin and Scott Humphries, saying he was tired of limping along with a mediocre forehand and a subpar first-serve percentage.

Fine-tuning is one thing. This was a full-scale intervention that began on Fish's first practice after a two-week hiatus in December as Martin fed Fish hundreds of balls manually over the net. Job One was to fix Fish's backswing on the forehand, which wasn't generating enough spin.

"My dad told me when I was 8 years old to go from low to high," Fish said, referring to Tom, a teaching pro. "I got away from that for a good 16 years. I just wanted to get my forehand to average. I really lost a lot of confidence in it last year and I felt like that was the reason why I lost a lot of close matches.

"The problem was when the ball was high I was always coming through flat. The ball spin would come off my racket almost sideways. The range that I had to miss the ball and make the ball was real small."

Fish said he'd also become overly reliant on an exaggerated rock-back, surge-forward motion when he served to propel him toward the net for his serve-and-volley game, costing him height and accuracy.

"On a good day, I would serve 50 or 52 percent first serves," Fish said. "These days, that's not good enough. If I could get my serve to 60 percent, it would minimize a lot of the breaks that I have."

Fish approached that project with far more trepidation than the forehand reconstruction. The revamped, more economical service motion is still very much a work in progress, as his first-serve percentage this year is still 50.

"The serve is the toughest to change," he said. "We want to maximize the height over the net, the trajectory of getting up and hitting it to where I have a real good margin for error."

Mardy Fish Year-End Ranking
Year	Rank	W-L
2006	47	22-18
2005	227	6-11
2004	37	29-20
2003	20	39-25

Humphries said Fish still has some "growing pains on that front," but added he and Martin were impressed with how quickly Fish integrated the offseason work into his game.

"It's been a long couple of years, but he's playing better tennis now than he did before he was hurt," Humphries said. "And he doesn't want to stop there. He wants to crack the top 10."

Fish reached the semifinals in Auckland and made his first-ever Grand Slam quarterfinal in Australia, upsetting fourth-seeded Ivan Ljubicic in the first round.

"I lost the first set and won the second in a tiebreak," Fish said. "That's a set I would have lost last year."

With a spot in the semifinals on the line, Fish ran into his close pal Andy Roddick, who steamrolled him.

"I can't remember much of that match," Fish said. "It was quick and not fun. I would have anticipated that playing Andy on such a big stage would've been more fun and a more competitive match. But he really wanted a chance at Roger [Federer]. It's well-documented that he played well that day."

Fish, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist, badly wants to play Davis Cup again. He was a regular selection from 2002 to '04. But the Bryan brothers have rightfully cornered the doubles market and Fish knows he'd have to make a powerful argument to unseat either Roddick or James Blake for a singles slot.

"Maybe I could give James or Andy a rest," he said. "I'd go to the first round and play every year and have those guys take it home if they want. But I'm not in a position for [Davis Cup captain] Patrick [McEnroe] to make that call. Those guys are top 10."

Bonnie DeSimone is a freelancer who contributes frequently to ESPN.com.