Australian Open: Andy Murray to face US teenager Ryan Harrison in the first round

The Scot – runner-up in each of the last two years in Melbourne – will meet the 19-year-old, one of the rising stars on the ATP Tour, with the winner moving on to play either Xavier Malisse or Edouard Roger-Vasselin.

Top seed and defending champion Novak Djokovic meets Italy’s Paolo Lorenzi while both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will take on qualifiers.

Murray has been drawn in the same half of the draw as world No 1 Djokovic, his conqueror in last year’s final at Melbourne Park. It means Nadal and Federer will be in the same half of the draw for the first time at a Grand Slam since the 2005 French Open.

It will be Murray’s first meeting with Harrison, a 6ft right-hander from Louisiana who has risen to No 84 in the world rankings.

Familiar foe Ernests Gulbis is also in Murray’s section of the draw, along with Russia’s Alex Bogomolov Jnr. French duo Gael Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga are possible opponents in the last 16 and quarter-finals.

Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal has dismissed concerns over his fitness, saying his shoulder is “in perfect condition” ahead of the Australian Open.

The world No 2 plans to take February off to recover from a nagging shoulder injury, but will compete at Melbourne Park in search of an 11th Grand Slam title.

Nadal, 25, said his semi-final loss to Gael Monfils at the Qatar Open to start 2012 was a better result than he had expected.

“It was a better result than I thought and the shoulder is in perfect condition,” Nadal said on the eve of today’s draw. “Normally, you warm up for half an hour, 40 minutes, but there I was warming up for maybe an hour and a half on match days to practice a little bit more.”

While he won a sixth French Open crown last year, Nadal lost to world No 1 Novak Djokovic in the finals of Wimbledon and the US Open.

Nadal said towards the end of last year he had lost some passion for the game, but he did lead Spain to the Davis Cup title at the start of December. The 2009 Australian Open champion said he was working hard to regain his world No 1 ranking. “I played with fantastic passion the last two matches of the year in Davis Cup,” Nadal said. “I’ve been working hard. I think I’m working the right way. There’s Djokovic [to compete with], but there’s a lot of fantastic players around and I have to be ready to compete against everybody.”

Meanwhile, Argentine Juan Martin del Potro complained to the umpire about rowdy crowd behaviour during a 7-6, 6-4 loss to Marcos Baghdatis in the quarter-finals of the Sydney International yesterday.

A partisan crowd cheered loudly every time Cypriot Baghdatis won a point and top seed Del Potro spoke to official Fergus Murphy for three minutes at the end of the first set.

Del Potro was rattled when the pro-Baghdatis crowd shouted out on set point and Murphy offered to request more security guards to control the situation. While the crowd remained raucous in the second set, world No 11 Del Potro, the former US Open champion who has battled back from injury, voiced no further concerns.

Afterwards, Del Potro seemed clueless as to why Baghdatis receives such noisy support in Australia, home to a large Greek Cypriot population, but played down his complaint when he came off court.

“I don’t know where Cyprus is, if it’s close to Australia or not,” Del Potro said. “But many guys come to here to see his game and follow his tennis.

“Sometimes it’s difficult when the crowd talks during the point, but I really love to play with this kind of crowd. Sometimes someone is cheering for Marcos, someone is cheering for me, but I didn’t lose any points because of the crowd.”

Baghdatis, runner-up at the 2006 Australian Open, was unaware of any crowd problems. “I don’t see any problem,” he said. “The only one time was at the set point when somebody was talking during the point, or shouting. But I mean, it disturbed me, too. I was lucky to win the point. That’s all that was bad. It’s nice to have that support.”

Baghdatis faces Frenchman Julien Benneteau in the semi-finals after he beat Bogomolov 6-2, 6-4. The other men’s semi today will be between Finland’s Jarkko Nieminen and Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin. Nieminen beat Bobby Reynolds of the US 6-3, 6-3 and Istomin upset world No 18 Richard Gasquet 6-4, 7-6.