They Could be Heroes

Good mornin', fine ladies (and gents). While Melbourne sleeps, I'm creating a quick post to give y'all a place to talk, what with the latest CC thread overflowing the 1,000 Comment mark. So move the conversation over here and let's have a little fun, shall we? In my mind, yesterday's male stars, if you leave out the usual suspects (Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, James Blake, et al) were:

Lleyton Hewitt - All right, he's a marquee name. Still, anybody who posts an identical score to Roger Federer's, goes 2-3 on  bagels and gives up just three games in that other set deserves some props, right? Lleyton was asked if there was anything his coach, Tony Roche, was unhappy about after his demolition of Steve Darcis and he replied:  Not that I've heard yet. Wait till I get on the court tomorrow...

Hyung-Taik Lee - He hammered Chris Guccione in straights, which was a very solid performance, given that "Gooch" has been playing well and figured as a big crowd favorite. No quotes from HT -  dude don't do no stinkin' press in English!  Guccione was asked if he had "set himself" to get through the first round this year, and snapped:  Are you serious? What do you think I'm doing?

Marat Safin - Ain't no mountain high enough! The emerging winter sports king adapted to the hot weather nicely, beating Ernests Gulbis (with a name like that, he belongs in the next 007 flick) and said of his newfound passion for snowboarding: Yeah, I think it's pretty cool.. .I'm alive, so I think it was good. Snowboarding as a life-threatening sport. Gotta love the drama queens!

Juan Carlos Ferrero - His match-up with Nicholas Kiefer was one of the more compelling clashes of the day, and JC demonstrated that all that talk of a career change a few  years ago (Rumor has it that he's been approached to play Jesus in the annual Toledo Easter Passion pageant) was premature. He allowed Kiefer just eight games, 4-3-1

Michael Russel - Co-Journeyman of the Century with Paul Goldstein (hey, where the hail is Goldie, anyhow?), he survived a five-setter (6-3 in the fifth) against Fabulous Fabio Fognini, who as all of you know was named for the pasta special served at the popular Roman restaurant, House of Medici.

Jurgen Melzer - Austria rawks! Except not in tennis, so Melzer's straight-setter over Jiri Vanek was stop the presses news in Vienna.

Fabrice Santoro - Obviously, you don't have to be tall to handle John Isner's serve; Santoro schooled him in straights, with nary a sign of a tiebreaker. What'd Isner do, channel Elena Dementieva?

You're all gonna want to kill me, but I just can't get on Santoro's magic bus. Maybe it was that sherbet shirt he wore at the US Open, or my indifference to his "magical" game (I like my three-card monte in the street, thank-you very much!).

And what's with this record (most Grand Slams played! Woo-hoo!)? It's like giving me a huge shout-out for "most trips to the ATM machine." Besides, his new record can be looked at another way: he's the guy who's played in the most majors, ever, without winning even one of the danged things.

You want to know what a guy looks like after  he's played 62 Grand Slams? Check it out.

Fernando Verdasco - I'm a male heterosexual, so a huge portion of this guy's appeal gets little more than a shrug out of me, except when it comes to his game. He lost just seven games to Theirry Ascione of France and served him one bagel.

Robin Haase - Robin is in the Haase! I have this mental image of him jumping up and down in his room on the day the draw was made and he saw he got Ivan Ljubicic in a Grand Slam. Haase, 7-6 in the fourth.

Marin Cilic - I am Croatian man. Serve big. Like Goran.  Eat good food, make me strong to serve bigger. I kill Nicolas Almagro, number 28 seed. Tomorrow, nobody knows.

Vince Spadea - The wack rapper, Vindawg, oblivious to all criticism and marching to the beat of a different drummer (a very different drummer) took out tennis Lothario Radek Stepanek (seeded No. 30) for the 300th win of his career.

I woke in the middle of the night in the grip of a vivid nightmare: bare-chested Vindawg, rapping on stage at Madison Square Garden, with DJ Cliff Drysdale scratchin' on his left and Radek doing the worm on his right.

Thank God for daylight!

I'll have a matching They Could Be Heroines post tomorrow.