Roger Federer in action during his 7-6, 6-7, 7-6 victory over Radek Stepanek at the Kooyong Classic on Wednesday. (AFP)

Melbourne: Australian Open champions Roger Federer and Amelie Mauresmo renewed calls to stage the event later in the year after the intense build-up to next week’s Grand Slam resulted in a spate of injuries.

“It would be nice if the Australian Open would be a bit later, because then we would have a bit more time in the off season,” men’s world number one Federer said at the invitational Kooyong Classic.

“But because the first Grand Slam is just around the corner, basically that’s why we don’t have any rest.”

Federer blamed scheduling of the season’s opening major for the growing list of injuries in the warm-up tournaments over the past two weeks.

World No.2 Rafael Nadal became the highest-profile casualty on Tuesday when he pulled out of the Sydney International with a right thigh strain.

Former world No.1 Venus Williams is the latest to join the pullout list. An Australian Open official said on Wednesday that Venus had withdrawn from the first Grand Slam of 2007 because of a left wrist injury.

Venus, currently ranked 48 in the world, joins world number one Justine Henin-Hardenne among the absentees from this year’s event, starting on Monday.

Also on withdrawal roster are Russians Svetlana Kuznetsova and Nadia Petrova, and Thailand’s Paradorn Srichaphan. Injuries as well as the stifling heat were the most common complaints.

Local hope Lleyton Hewitt and Argentina’s David Nalbandian are also nursing niggling strains.

The Open has also been blighted with player forfeiture as searing heat in the Victorian state often leads to unbearable conditions on the Rebound Ace court, where temperatures can exceed 45 degrees Celsius.

Mauresmo was blunt with her assessment of the situation. “It seems like we’ve been talking about this for years... but it doesn’t seem to be the concern of the organisation here,” she said in Sydney.

Tennis Australia officials did agree to push the tournament, traditionally held in the last two weeks of January, back one week but later scrapped the plan and reverted to the original dates.

Federer felt moving the slam to March, when the weather would also be cooler, would eliminate many of the problems players face at this time of year.