TW Opinion Poll, Part 2

In a comment unrelated to my earlier post, The One-Ended Spectrum, a poster (please ID yourself, I'm going blind trying to find this!) wrote:

The comment got me thinking - what IF The Mighty Fed had decided around Christmas time that he's going to bag his tennis career and become an Ultimate Fighter? Anna Wintour's arm candy? A reclusive maker of cuckoo clocks (thereby freeing his squeeze to become Mrs. Mirka Wawrinka)? How can you even imagine such a thing!

Well, if you think that's a nightmare scenario, contemplate what it would do to a pecking afflicted with Phil Mickelson disease (Granted, Rafael Nadal is the exception).  Okay, you could give up the French to Jet Boy. And if Andy Roddick continues on the upswing, you could concede him Wimbledon. But that leaves two other Slams wide, wide open. You might have a Safin popping up to win one here, a Ljubicic there, A Davydenko somewhere else. A Haas, if he meets a Ljubicic or Davydenko in the final, or a breakthrough by Murray or Djokovic. TMF is the glue that holds the men's tour together; he's been more able to make the trains run on time than Benito Mussolini. The comment above is spot on; order is alway infinitely more attractive than chaos when it comes to spinning out a narrative to which the greatest number of people can relate. So, in addition to everything else he is, TMF is the handrail to which every person who follows tennis clings.

Here are some random thoughts I had while mucking about in the clippings and post-morts today:

!AowayneMy Match of the Day - Safin, schmafin. We get a lot of Andy and Marat throughout the year. But how often do we get Wayne Arthurs vs. Mardy Fish? This one should be loads of fun and I hope Wayne (seesh, even his name is old school!) has the energy to play his best.

Hurricane Warning!  Watch out for Lleyton Hewitt, no matter what the recent record or odds suggest. Sure it looks like the fire in the belly has gone out, and his professional life seems utterly in turmoil. But this is a willful guy who's been - narrowly - denied something that I get the sneaking suspicion means the world to him: the title of his native Australia. I always felt he would win it, on the vague theory that he's the polar opposite of, oh, Amelie Mauresmo, when it comes to this kind of thing. Think of this as a hurricane warning. Odds are that the gathering storm will play itself out, or make an abrupt left turn before it hits the shore in Melbourne. But if it doesn't, the roof's going to be ripped off a lot of heads.

So What Else is New?This, from the Australian Open website, on 23-year-old Aiko Nakamura's win over Sania Mirza: Nakamura, who last year reached her first career final when she was runner-up at the Japan Open in Tokyo, controlled the match from the outset as India's highest profile sportswoman collapsed amid a stream of unforced errors. Not to mention tears.

Jumping Without a Chute.Hey! Anybody else notice that we're four days into a Slam and Champagne Kimmy Clijsters hasn't been lurching around with one of her appendages conspicuously wrapped, telling everyone that she's injured, but would never blame a loss on her injury because. . . because. . . that would be unsportsladylike! (Aw, sorry. I know, I know. I just can't help myself sometimes!)

So Just What Countries Aren't Part of Your Deal?  In keeping with the wonderfully post-modern "The Grand Slam of Asia/Pacific" motif, the web writers for TGSAP are beating the drum mightily about how well their own are doing: This year there were five players from China, one from Chinese Taipei, three from Japan, two from Uzbekistan, one from Thailand as well as Mirza, who is already firmly established as the number one female sporting star in sports-mad India, in the women's singles field. It's quite a place, that Pacific and Asia, but that drive from Mumbai to KurraburraturraNurra  is a real bear!

Good Sister Dinara.  It did not go unnoticed in the international press that Dinara Safina, currently NO. 10 on the WTA Tour, is doing better and ranked more highly than her brother, Marat.

I suppose that if Marat really were a the student Raskolnikov, or some similar Dostoevskian character, he would have split Dinara's head wide open with an axe by now. Perhaps out of sheer gratitude for that, Dinara has been saying such starry-eyed,  kid-sister things about her brother that you want  to jump into the computer screen and give her a big fat hug.

You may remember that Marat engaged in a little public display of "tough love" at the Australian Open the year before last. This is always a dicey undertaking when you're older, bigger, stronger, more famous - not to mention more flaky - than the person who's feelings you're about stomp all over, and especially so when you do it in a press conference instead of your basement rec room in Monaco.

Never mind. Reporters have been dousing this issue with gasoline for weeks now, but they can't get the match lit. Dinara, always the advised, says she would never dream of being the adviser, humbly explaining "He's too good for my advice."

Of course she's right about that but -sheesh - Dinara, haven't you ever heard the word, "payback?"

Furthermore, it turns out that a little tough love has done this chica some good - at least the way she tells it. "He thought that I was not listening (to his criticisms)  but that was not true. After that interview that he gave, the year when he won the Australian Open, my rank went high,
so probably he was right."

I've got a kid sister. She was not Dinara Safina. The only thing I can ever remember her saying is, "I'm going to tell daddy that you blew up Mrs. Gordon's birdbath with a cherry bomb unless you give me half that Devil Dog right now."

And lastly, here are my five **Players of the day:

Wayne Arthurs -  Here's a funstory on a guy with the most underrated serve in the game.

Fabrice Santoro - He's so old I thought he was dead, but I say hoist a GE to a guy playing his 58th career Grand Slam event, at 34. Fear the magician.

Sam Querrey - The promising U.S. junor who lacks GS experience - heck, he lacks junior tennis experience - has gotten past two quality opponents and could overpower Tommy Robredo to make the fourth round in just his second appearance in a major.

Li Na - I keep telling you. . . she's built like a turnip but the effect on opponents has been pure onion.

Shahar Peer - Her game is lean, mean, and always fun to watch.

Enjoy the tennis, y'all.