Drive-By Post

'Afternoon, folks. I've got to duck into the editing bunker, but I wanted to drop by and say Hi. We have some thoughts coming in later today or tomorrow from TennisWorld's Spiritual Adviser, Miguel Seabra, and I have to finish up an Ivan Lendl piece for y'all before the end of the week.  Mikey will be writing about the Estoril champ, Novak Djokovic. His win in Portugal catapulted him to the top of the ATP heap in the match-wins for 2007 department (he was 31-6 as of Monday). It's hard to imagine anyone winning more matches than Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer, but the Djoker has played more tournaments.

Incidentally, the other day Pete Sampras told me that he like Djokovic's game: "He likes to move into the court and hit a clean, pretty flat ball. I like that style, you can do a lot of damage with that. I was pretty impressed. I don't enjoy watching Nadal so much, I just don't find the game from the deep backcourt that interesting. But he's a great clay-court player, no doubt about that."

It looks like Andy Murray was the first big casualty in Rome. That's not a huge surprise,given that Andy has struggled with injuries all year - and it's early.

The frequency of Murray's injuries is a little disturbing; after all, the kid doesn't turn 20 until next week, and in every other sport Scots have a reputation for being indestructible.

Then again, this is a time of year when a player's ranking may suffer from missing events or absorbing early losses, but in the back of his mind Murray - like everyone else - knows that no segment of the year offers anything like the optimal training/playing conditions as the European clay-court circuit. The surface is forgiving,the weather close to ideal, and the opportunities to fine-tune your game with match play are abundant.

The flip side of this ideal scenario is that if you're willing and able to fully carry out your professional duties, you could wind up a tired puppy by the time Roland Garros rolls around. Or you can, if your name isn't Rafael Nadal. For Jet Boy often seems like he could play 123 consecutive clay-court events, win every one, and still show up, banging on the padlocked gates of Roland Garros, at sunrise on the first day of the tournament.

More tomorrow!