Our question of the day: What the hail is up with Nikolay Davydenko, once affectionately embraced by most of us here as Kolya the Obscure? I shouldn't be so glib about this, but Kolya is becoming the Britney Spears of men's tennis; here's the latest controversy in which he's gotten himself embroiled.
I don't know. Kolya is either the most persecuted individual since that dude with the rare form of lethal TB actually got on board a commercial airline flight, or he's got some very bizarre attention-seeking compulsion. It all started with the remarks he made trashing the Sydney tournament last January, and it hasn't relented since.
Meanwhile, it looks like another player has sallied forth to confess that he has been approached to fix matches and, at the same time, some bookies have stepped up to give a match involving Dmitry Tursunov a clean slate. It's a shame, but it seems like the gambling issue in tennis just keeps grabbing headlines, even when those headlines essentially read: No Evidence of Match-Fixing Found in Paris!
But I'll tell you how bad this is: my friend Paul who is with the State Department and just returned from overseas (yep, Iraq) asked me on the phone last night: So tell me, all those Wimbledon titles Bjorn Borg won, you mean the fix was in?
Granted, he was joking around. But the scary part is that while Paul couldn't tell you who won the Paris Masters (or, perhaps, who won the U.S. Open), he's heard all the rumors about match-fixing in tennis. This has been just awful for the sport.
Anyway, this is your watercooler for the day; I'm still working on a Roger Federer post for later.