NADAL AIMS TO KEEP WORKING HARD

World No. 2 Rafael Nadal insists he will keep working hard and playing at a high intensity to be competitive at every tournament this year.

"I will play like this until my mind and my physical performance say, 'finish'," said Nadal, who has been training for the past 10 days, at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open in Doha on Monday.

"If you are working very hard physically, but your mental game is not there, you don't feel competitive, you won't feel hungry to keep winning or to keep fighting every ball. If you're not ready to compete and to combine both things, [it] will be very difficult to be competitive in all the tournaments."

Countdown To 2012: Nadal Confronts Djokovic Challenge

The Spaniard starts the 2012 ATP World Tour season 4,035 South African Airways ATP Rankings points behind No. 1-ranked Novak Djokovic, who he lost to in six finals last year.

"I think everybody thinks that Djokovic will be difficult to beat. Not myself. You cannot be on top every time. I lost against Djokovic in all the finals, but I only [just] lost against him. That's a really positive thing. He did better than me and that's it.

"I don't know if I can beat him. The only thing that I know is I have to practise to improve my tennis, and that's what I going to try to do. For the rest of my career, I don't know if that's going to be enough to beat him or to lose him 100 more times. I cannot predict that.

"What I can predict is I going to work hard to try to be competitive enough to play with well against everybody, not only against him, because first thing - you have to be in finals. That's a very difficult thing to do."

Nadal is scheduled to play German Philipp Kohlschreiber in the Doha first round.