Your Call, 1.14: Parity Plus

Mornin', folks, from chilly New York City, where once again I marvel at how many women brave the winter weather wearing panty-hose and slingback pumps. And I'm a cold weather guy; it's 15-degrees here but I can't be bothered to put on gloves or any hat other than a trucker cap (my preferred one at the moment is a brown waxed cotton job, courtesy of Berretta. Classy lid - if that can be applied to a gimme cap). Still, sensitive guy that I am, I've sometimes wondered what would be the toughest thing about being a woman. I reckon it's got to be dressing like one. What are these cross-dressers, nuts?

Anyway, here's today's Your Call. If you want to kick it off by talking tennis, here's something I'm thinking about: It seems more and more like the WTA (and, to a lesser extent, the ATP) flood-gates have been flung wide, wide open, and once the waters rush through they may never recede.Just two years ago, the men's game was in full lock-down, with Rafael Nadal the only mustang running free outside the corral controlled by Roger Federer. And while Justine Henin dominated only at the discretion of the Williams sisters, she was clearly a roost-ruling figure. In victory or defeat, she was the baseline-value in the women's game; the still center of the revolving circus.

All that has seemingly changed, overnight. And the most intriguing thing about the shifting power structure is that it isn't fully or adequately defined by the names and records of Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, Dinara Safina or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. The gathering pressure is also being applied by Juan Martin del Potro, Gilles Simon, Marin Cilic, Ernests Gulbis, Caroline Wozniacki, Agnieszka Radwanska, Victoria Azarenka. And we haven't even mentioned the equivalent of WTA championship lurkers, Elena Dementieva and Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Most of us, and we journalists in particular, like to think in clusters and groups - manageable concepts like the Four Aces, or the Fab Five (remember that group of Swedes?), with sharp lines dividing the champs from the contenders and the also-rans (new definition for that term: Anna Chakvetadze). But those clear, handy dividing lines are being stressed, and perhaps as early as this year they will be obliterated. You might be surprised, but would you be shocked if, say, the Australian Open winners turned out to be Radwanska and Gulbis?

Granted, it's unlikely to happen, but it seems to me that tennis is hurtling toward parity, and has been doing so for quite some time. On the men's side, Roger Federer has helped mask this trend with his outright dominance. It sounds oxymoronic, but you can have parity as well as domination. Having a paragon is really a value-added component that has no hard and fast influence on any other defining aspect of the game. It's as if everybody in the NFL finished with an 8-8 record but for the New England Patriots, who were 15-1. I'd say that's parity-plus. Take the latter out of the mix and the undeniable main theme is turned upside down - it's no longer about the dominance of the Patriots, it's about the parity of the league.

I think something like that has been happening in tennis, most conspicuously in the ATP game. I'll have some thoughts on Federer tomorrow, meanwhile enjoy today's tennis.

- Pete