Daily Bagel: No Rafa in Australia

The Daily Bagel is your dose of the interesting reporting, writing and quipping from around the Internet.

• Video: Hopman Cup begins on Friday, headlined by the Serbian team of Novak Djokovic and Ana Ivanovic. Here's a look back at one of their giggly postmatch interviews in 2010, when they made the finals. Serbian Ken and Barbie, indeed.

• The story of the day, obviously, is Rafael Nadal's decision to withdraw from the Australian Open.

• Nadal, meanwhile, is reportedly following Roger Federer out the doors of IMG.

• Sport360 reports that David Ferrer and Nicolas Almagro may rule themselves out of the first round of Davis Cup for Spain. Spain plays Canada in Vancouver in February.

• The Changeover with a hilarious compilation of the best tennis gifs of 2012. Great stuff.

• Here's an ominous quote from Roger Rasheed on his pairing with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. "I want to win, maybe more than he [Tsonga] does." Let's hope he wasn't being literal.

• Not even Amelie Mauresmo can smooth over the dispute between Marion Bartoli and the French tennis federation. Mauresmo tells Sport24 that it's unlikely Bartoli will play Fed Cup for France.

• Matt Cronin previews some WTA stories for 2013.

• The Grandstand blog posts a mock up of an iPhone chat between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Damn you, autocorrect!

• Heavy Topspin blog has a great post about the diminishing number of ATP Challenger tournaments on the offer in 2013.

• The ATP announced a new partnership with Emirates.

• Surprising news here from ZooTennis that Yulia Putintseva, who turns 18 in January, will play in the Australian Open juniors tournament.

• Non-tennis: The best news bloopers of 2012. Long live Sweet Brown.

See or read something that you enjoyed and want to share? Feel free to email or tweet us links to pieces from around the Internet that may have slipped past our radar.