Mornin', everyone. Here's a fresh new post at which you can talk about the Artois Championships, currently going on at London's Queens Club, today. Jo Wilfried Tsonga is a man on a mission these days, having won two grass-court warm-up events (Lanzarote and Surbiton). Yesterday, Tsonga took out Lleyton Hewitt, who was bidding to go where nobody - not Pete Sampras, Boris Becker, or Andy Roddick - had gone before: the throne room at Queens for a record, fifth time.
Tsonga is currently riding his highest ATP ranking yet, no. 121. You may remember that early this year, Tsonga and Andy Roddick played a riveting match at the Australian Open: Tsonga won the first-set tiebreaker, 20-18, then took the second set to a ' breaker - and Roddick to the brink - before Andy subdued him, 7-2, and then went on to take the next two sets.
There may be no better time of year for a guy like Tsonga to make a mark, partly because of the advantage grass courts give to guys who serve big - and this guy serves huge. In 2004, as a 19-year old pup, he fired the third-fastest serve on the ATP Tour (144 MPH) for the year, and also logged wins over Carlos Moya and Mario Ancic. Just as the clay-court experts shine on the red dirt, the men carrying thunder sticks and a penchant for smothering the net have a small window to make a mark. That's one of the best things about tennis being a multi-surface sport, and one of the reasons that Roger Federer deserves tremendous respect for being - by far - the best all-purpose, all-surface player in the sport.
All this should tell you that when they make the Wimbledon draw, the major seed drawn closest to Tsonga should be afraid. Very afraid. And note that Tsonga took out Hewitt without scoring a service break (unless he and Hewitt traded the same number of breaks; I couldn't find the scorecard), which is exactly why the Big Dogs ought to be afraid. Very afraid. They hate those 7-6,6-7,7-6,7-6 scorelines. . .