A Boy and His Dog

I’ve taken over the desk formerly occupied by USA Today’s tennis reporter, Doug Robson. He’s going on to Miami early next week and wanted to get home to spend at least a few days with Sophie, his chocolate lab. She’s also his screensaver. It’s an eight-hour drive home for Doug, and I half-expected him to change his mind and stick around last night—a tennis tournament is a flame, and we are but moths. Doug went, though. It’s nice to see he has his priorities in order. I don’t know what it is about tennis and dog people; there sure are an awful lot of them in the game—we think of Lindsay and her rottweilers, Ivan Lendl (who actually bred German shepherds), Monica Seles, Martina Navratilova. Anybody got a theory?