JOHNNY WATTERSON ON TENNISColin Niland has reaped significant reward for persistence in pursuit of his dream

Alan Sillitoe's novel The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner has long provided a useful image for sportswriters. The title is evocative of emotional and physical adversity, of the physiological and mental processes that allow runners to embrace pain and conquer it. The appeal of loneliness is that it highlights the emphasis on the self that absorbs elite athletes of every sport. The image of one person against the world, the thought of overcoming suffering for joy or triumph, is what makes sport compelling.

It appears though, that Sillitoe's book is not really about loneliness. It is about authority, the abuse of authority and one man's triumphant protest against a punitive and self-serving system.

The protagonist, a talented distance runner called Smith, stops yards from the finish line to allow rivals overtake him as the prison governor who would have derived considerable kudos from his win looks on in outrage.

That he sacrifices his own simple pleasure, the winning of the race, to punish his captors makes the rebellion more poignant. But Smith knows he could have won the race, so he retains a certain satisfaction.

And therein lies another sporting verity: ultimately you do it for yourself. You can get help, but the energy, the impulse, the compulsive drive and the notion of success come from within.

Competition is often about the lengths to which athletes will go for inner satisfaction.

Adversity seems to be what has propelled many of the world's best tennis players into chauffeured cars and five-star hotels. Eastern and southeastern Europeans, particularly those from Serbia, have emerged from troubled pasts to conquer the world game.

At a lower level an Irishman is ploughing a lone furrow. Conor Niland moved, almost unnoticed, up another step in the tennis ladder, when he was yesterday posted as 229 in the world, having won a €34,000 Challenger event in New Delhi, his first at that level.

The relatively few fans who watched Ireland play the Ukraine in Fitzwilliam last month in the Davis Cup could not have been anything but impressed by much of Niland's play against a man ranked much higher on the ATP ladder. In the end the Irishman lost a match he could so easily have won, but the five-set marathon against the world number 132, Sergiy Stakhovsky, had a feel-good factor about it.

The Ukrainian has since cracked the top 100, having won a €84,000 Challenger tournament in Spain last week. With that match in mind it comes as little surprise that the 26-year-old Niland beat the Czech Tomas Cakl 6-6, 6-4 to clinch that first Challenger title.

"The Davis Cup was a very good match for me. I left positive," says Niland. "What it did was give me confidence. He (Stakhovsky) is inside the top 100 now. I know I can compete with him and players of that standard. I want to be in the top 150 by next summer and If I can be higher, brilliant. I want to be going to Grand Slam quallies (qualification tournaments) and who knows.

"The main difference now is that I stayed composed, saved some break points in the (Challenger) final. It started to come together and I was able to put myself in a position to win.

"I feel I'm at a standard where I can compete with these guys in the top 200 and now I can pick and choose the Challengers I play each week."

The title represents a milestone for the Limerick man, and he will be looking to build on this win after a season that has largely propelled him forward. He had already taken top prize in two ITF Futures events in 2008, winning in Bournemouth and Limerick.

But the Futures tournaments are the lower level and from now on it is bigger money and the bigger ranking points of the Challengers that will demand Niland's attention.

He is still in India preparing for this week's event, also in New Delhi, and for the first time he is seeded (eight). It means other small bonuses of no travel and no change of hotel. But the possibility of illness or injury - and already the humidity is rocketing - will also be in the back of his mind.

Later in the year he will hit the South America circuit doing the same, clocking up mileage on his favoured clay in the chase for a higher ranking.

There is no complexity about what Niland has chosen to do and he is just one of hundreds chasing the dream. But the punishing routine in chase of the glittering prize of Grand Slam tennis can be a lonely, personal crusade that demands considerable sacrifice.

Pádraig Harrington's US PGA win in Detroit on Sunday arguably makes him Ireland's greatest sportsman, and though it may seem far-fetched to make a connection with Niland, playing in the second division of world tennis, last week the Limerickman took steps in the foothills of a mountain similar to the one Harrington has conquered.

The loneliness of the long-distance runner, whatever way you read Sillitoe's book, is still a reality.