Howdy, Tribe. Reviewing the last few posts and comments I see a clear trend here - I am being made redundant sniffs and wonders where it all went wro - er, right . You are a runaway train on the track of expertise, insightful commentary, analysis and snark. BTW, Kamakshi, or webmistress for Tennis.com, is doing a great job Down Under so don't neglect to drop in and check out what she's posting; I'll be there with her for Week 2 to try to bring this all to critical mass.
Okay, so here are some things that I was thinking about over the first few days of the Australian Open:
Pat McEnroe: He's really matured and emerged as a terrific commentator - he even has his signature bon mots now: the dropper! That's just sick! Okay, those aren't stop the presses novel, but they establish Pat's personality, which is a pleasant bonus - especially when, like Pat, you don't go overboard and upstage the match you're covering. What I liked best in his first turns, though, was the way Pat called out Andy Roddick for denigrating the chair umpire. It was an honorable thing to do, given Pat's friendship (and Davis Cup relationship) with Roddick. I agree that players should not get away with anything overtly disrespectful or insolent. It sends a terrible signal about the game as well as the player (the lunatics are not, after all, supposed to be in charge of the asylum). At the same time, players ought to be allowed to communicate and even challenge the chair umpire. The key is to draw a line in the sand, and then making sure that chair umpires understand the difference between legitimate dissent and insolence.
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Serena Williams and Michelle Wie: I don't know about you, but that cameo of Wie watching Serena's match and the inane commentary and interview looked to me like a cheap publicity stunt - an embarrassing knock-off of the Roger Federer-Tiger Woods U.S. Open love fest of last year. And the fawning over Serena's agent Jill Smoller (I know and like Jill, this isn't about her), who presumably set up the video-op, made me cringe. I don't have time to go into all the incestuous dimensions at play in that scenario, but this was both tediously self-aggrandizing and self-debasing (Who cares if Serena is out-of-shape and a borderline embarrassment to the concept of "professionalism." Michelle Wie, is here, just like Tiger was for Roger. Isn't it cool how alike golf and tennis are?*). My take: i wish it were LaVar Arrington, like in the good old days when Serena was kicking booty and taking names.
Marcos Baghdatis: Maybe I just missed it, but in all the chatter about how up-and-down Baghdatis has been over the past year, nobody bothered to mention that when the Grand Slams came around, the guy really stepped it up - that was the the most germane point to make and I didn't hear it mentioned.
The Young Guns -Lucy, chief correspondent and sorceress of TennisWorld's Australia bureau, was all over this in the comments. The big story of the first few days was the flair and formidable competitive fire brought to the game by the handful of youngsters who are touted as potential replacements for the somewhat tiresome second-tier players of today (David Nalbandian, Nikolkay Davydenko, Ivan Ljubicic). Andy Murray led the charge, losing one measly game to Alberto Martin in a 70-minute match, and Novak Djokovic almost matched his performance. My guess: the Young Guns (remember, the group includes last year's finalist, Baghdatis) produce two semifinalists by the time the smoke clears.
Wayne Arthurs - Man, this guy is so old-school that he makes Ivan Ljubicic look like Ludacris. It really is like somebody took a stout, solid, reliable if not entirely electrifying Aussie and put him in aspic, to be trotted out now and then to give us all a nice, sepia-toned snapshot of the kind of player, both game and temperament-wise, who once typified the game. Was it Darren Cahill or Mardy Fish who said that Arthurs' serve is one of the great shots in tennis? I don't know, but. . . Go Wayne!
I'll be following up on the Young Guns over at ESPN.com later today, and checking back with you later.