I figured, let's get something a little different from the ubiquitous pumpkin and apple seeds, so we collected a few milkweed seed pods. These pods are about the size of small plantains, and they're packed tight with seeds - each of them a tiny, brown kernel surrounded by fine white floss that opens into a golf-ball sized parachute. The slightest breeze carries off the seeds once the pod splits in the fall, and if you look a patch of milkweed at this time of year you could be forgiven for thinking you're regarding a patch of cotton. The white tufts are the pods, burst open, slowly discharging their cargo to colonize far and wide. We also collected some rose hips from the rosa rugosa bushes, a nice crimson head of sumac (you can brew a tea loaded with vitamin C from sumac.
After we collected our specimens, we drifted back to the house and got ready for our 4 PM Thanksgiving meal at the Andes Hotel. We were joined by my older sister Judy and our neighbors Myles, Caroline and their three-year old, Grace. Luke is very jealous of Grace; when I tell him our nightly story story about Harvey the Mouse (Luke's alter-ego, a very naughty little mouse who lives at the farm), he always interrupts: "Daddy,tell the part where Harvey is mean to Gracie!" Luke squirms and giggles with sheer delight when Harvey is mean to Gracie, even though Harvey always pays the price and learns a lesson.
Of course, Gracie in real life is clever and enterprising, and she knows how to push Luke's buttons (the other day, she found a way to scale my desk and get at a container of butter cookies that I had earlier forbidden Luke to touch - I swear she looked over her shoulder at him and smiled coyly as she jammed the first cookie into her mouth).
We'll begin Davis Cup coverage in earnest tomorrow, perhaps taking a look back over Davis Cup history for purpose related to the upcoming tie. I don't think there will be an official press conference in Portland until the draw is made on Thursday. One special feature we'll have is frequent poster GVgirl, giving us daily reports from Portland. I will be around all weekend, BTW. We're staying in the city this time, and I'll be watching Davis Cup along with you.
Oh, I have one bit of tennis news to pass on. You might remember that I recently posted at ESPN on the break-up of Brad Gilbert and Andy Murray. I emailed Brad after writing that post, and a related one here that touched on some of the same themes. Brad got back to me a few days later (but too late from me to do much with it, because of my travel schedule), writing in an email that while he didn't want to get into a public discussion about the split, he thought that I pretty much nailed it with my commentary at ESPN. From that, I have to believe that Brad was blind-sided by this decision, and is skeptical of the approach Murray wants to take going forward.
I noticed at one of the other threads (and thanks, everyone, for that great response to Andrew Friedman's fine Thanksgiving post!) that Roger Federer's "coaching situation" is on the table again. This is an interesting situation. Federer dominates the men's game, and obviously feels no special, game-based need to hire a coach. Fair enough. He also has a few characters in his life who probably provide useful input on the technical and strategic fronts.
But Roger's indifference to having a coach has to be linked to the role Mirka plays in his life, and she must be the biggest stumbling block to his hiring a coach. I mean, no matter what Mirka does (or doesn't) do for The Mighty Fed's game, it's pretty hard to imagine that if Mirka were out of the picture, Roger would be traveling, well, alone. Mirka takes up the psychic space in which a coach usually exists for a top player - meaning she is the one who watches Roger's back, who sits through those pre-Grand Slam final dinners, who tries to suppress whatever white noise surrounds him at a tournament.
Most players build teams around their coaches (even if they change coaches) and girlfriends and wives are expected to fit into the relational grid. But top players have different needs; for them, coaching becomes less about the X's and Os than about loyalty, comradeship and other "ambient" dimensions of the job - like knowing how to approach and solve problems in a way that creates as little stress and turbulence as possible. In other words, for top players, coaching usually has emotional dimensions comparable to the ones that exist in romantic relationships, which is always a challenge for the romantic partner of a top player (see ""H" for Henin).
I'll put it another way: there appears to be no room in Roger Federer's life for a coach, in terms of what coaches usually do for a player of Roger's caliber. I don't really see that situation changing, either - not unless TMF comes up against some serious challenges that shake his basic confidence in his game - or seem to present an insurmountable obstacle in a way that, say, Federer's inability to get hold of Rafael Nadal's game at Roland Garros does not. You don't get the sense that Roger feels a need to somehow crack the Rafa Code in Paris, hence he isn't going to hire a "coach" for that specific purpose.
For all I know, Mirka is a brilliant tennis analyst and strategist. But I'm more inclined to think that if Federer finds himself struggling, either against specific rivals or in general, the coaching theme will take on new life and he'll be more disposed to hiring someone.
