In a comment unrelated to my earlier post, The One-Ended Spectrum, a poster (please ID yourself, I'm going blind trying to find this!) wrote:
The comment got me thinking - what IF The Mighty Fed had decided around Christmas time that he's going to bag his tennis career and become an Ultimate Fighter? Anna Wintour's arm candy? A reclusive maker of cuckoo clocks (thereby freeing his squeeze to become Mrs. Mirka Wawrinka)? How can you even imagine such a thing!
Well, if you think that's a nightmare scenario, contemplate what it would do to a pecking afflicted with Phil Mickelson disease (Granted, Rafael Nadal is the exception). Okay, you could give up the French to Jet Boy. And if Andy Roddick continues on the upswing, you could concede him Wimbledon. But that leaves two other Slams wide, wide open. You might have a Safin popping up to win one here, a Ljubicic there, A Davydenko somewhere else. A Haas, if he meets a Ljubicic or Davydenko in the final, or a breakthrough by Murray or Djokovic. TMF is the glue that holds the men's tour together; he's been more able to make the trains run on time than Benito Mussolini. The comment above is spot on; order is alway infinitely more attractive than chaos when it comes to spinning out a narrative to which the greatest number of people can relate. So, in addition to everything else he is, TMF is the handrail to which every person who follows tennis clings.
Here are some random thoughts I had while mucking about in the clippings and post-morts today:
!AowayneMy Match of the Day - Safin, schmafin. We get a lot of Andy and Marat throughout the year. But how often do we get Wayne Arthurs vs. Mardy Fish? This one should be loads of fun and I hope Wayne (seesh, even his name is old school!) has the energy to play his best.
Hurricane Warning! Watch out for Lleyton Hewitt, no matter what the recent record or odds suggest. Sure it looks like the fire in the belly has gone out, and his professional life seems utterly in turmoil. But this is a willful guy who's been - narrowly - denied something that I get the sneaking suspicion means the world to him: the title of his native Australia. I always felt he would win it, on the vague theory that he's the polar opposite of, oh, Amelie Mauresmo, when it comes to this kind of thing. Think of this as a hurricane warning. Odds are that the gathering storm will play itself out, or make an abrupt left turn before it hits the shore in Melbourne. But if it doesn't, the roof's going to be ripped off a lot of heads.
So What Else is New?This, from the Australian Open website, on 23-year-old Aiko Nakamura's win over Sania Mirza: Nakamura, who last year reached her first career final when she was runner-up at the Japan Open in Tokyo, controlled the match from the outset as India's highest profile sportswoman collapsed amid a stream of unforced errors. Not to mention tears.
Jumping Without a Chute.Hey! Anybody else notice that we're four days into a Slam and Champagne Kimmy Clijsters hasn't been lurching around with one of her appendages conspicuously wrapped, telling everyone that she's injured, but would never blame a loss on her injury because. . . because. . . that would be unsportsladylike! (Aw, sorry. I know, I know. I just can't help myself sometimes!)
So Just What Countries Aren't Part of Your Deal? In keeping with the wonderfully post-modern "The Grand Slam of Asia/Pacific" motif, the web writers for TGSAP are beating the drum mightily about how well their own are doing: This year there were five players from China, one from Chinese Taipei, three from Japan, two from Uzbekistan, one from Thailand as well as Mirza, who is already firmly established as the number one female sporting star in sports-mad India, in the women's singles field. It's quite a place, that Pacific and Asia, but that drive from Mumbai to KurraburraturraNurra is a real bear!