The Deuce Club, 9.18

By Heidi Kim, TW Contributing Writer

Hey all!  Here's a great picture of Pete, cowboy Luke, and Asad, up on the farm having a good time.  I know the faces are small, but I didn't want to crop the beautiful landscape out.

On a somewhat tennis-related note, I was reading the Metro (free paper) on the subway the other day and caught sight of a photo of a sweaty Dinara Safina.  Turned out it was illustrating an article about a study that found an inverse correlation between heavy sweating and exercise-induced asthma.  In other words, if you sweat a lot, you are less likely to get asthma.  Why, they are not precisely sure, but doctors hypothesize that it just has to do with lubrication.  If you're sweating, presumably you're also sweating inside, so to speak, and keeping the airways damp helps to ward off the asthma.

I immediately started thinking about the few examples I could think of from pro tennis.  Andy Roddick, champion sweater, ought never to have had asthma in his life!  Djokovic, I believe, has had asthma problems, and he's certainly not the heaviest of sweaters.  Henin definitely had asthma issues, also not a very heavy sweater.  I don't know how light a sweater you need to be before you're in trouble, especially at the pro level where they're all so carefully hydrated and Gatoraded and energy gelled.

And with that pleasant thought, that's all for this week.  As a matter of fact, it'll be all from me for the foreseeable future.  Due to a heavy volume of other commitments, I won't be able to write Deuce Club anymore.  If you have thoughts on the future of DC, please feel free to email them to Pete via the contact tab.  Thanks for reading -- I've enjoyed emailing with and writing for all of you, and I'll see you in the discussion of the other posts, of course.  I also want to thank Pete for this opportunity and all the others I've had in the course of writing the DC, including meeting some of the other great writers/editors affiliated with Tennis -- Andrew, Asad, Ed, Steve, and Tom.  I've also greatly enjoyed meeting the TWibe in person, and hope to keep that going at future tennis tournaments!  Take care, everyone.