AO Crisis Center, Day 4

By Peter BodoPublished January 16, 2008

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - JANUARY 12: Marat Safin of Russia hits a forehand in his match with Fernando Conzalez of Chile during day four of the AAMI Classic at Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club on January 12, 2008 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Mark Dadswell/Getty Images) — © 2008 Getty Images

As we get ready to watch the Australian Open tonight, here is a valuable companion piece for you all to enjoy: The Black Book compiled by Djamel Abed and his, well, Core group. It contains all the significant stats compiled by Core over 2007. This will be your post for match-calling and discussion of the events at the AO.

There ought to be plenty to talk about, too, what with Roger Federer vs. Grand Slam Ironman Fabrice Santoro, Marat Safin vs. Marcos Baghdatis (the men's version of Davenport vs. Sharapova, only Lindsay isn't from Cyprus), and Sam Querrey vs. Dmitry Tursunov.

I will post more on this, but our man in Melbourne, Tom(ahawk) Perrotta of String Theory fame will be answering questions for y'all on Friday morning (Melbourne time). I'll post more details tomorrow. Tom and I will also do a "live chat" in an actual post sometime next week.

Enjoy the matches, see you tomorrow!