Fedbeaters?

(Ed. note - tomorrow will be an open-mike Talk back day; Steggy and I will be available from 11 A.M. until 3 P.M. for a free-flowing Q. and A. session. All are welcome, especially lurkers! I will also have a post on Justine-Henin Hardenne's surprise withdrawal from the Australian Open - Pete)

Well, this little exercise of giving y'all a chance to guess which two former players Brad Gilbert  thinks would be most likely to give Roger Federer fits on the court has been illuminating. I'm surprised that nobody got it right, but also believe this says less about your analytical powers than it does about the subjective nature - even among in-the-trenches tennis coaches - of these fat-chewing sessions.

The answer is: Ivan Lendl and Boris Becker.

Now, Gilbert isn't about to give away any state secrets, because he's the coach of Andy Murray, who already has a win over The Mighty Fed and hopes to experience more of the same. But I can't help but notice that these fellas have some things in common with another player whom I had picked as a potential winner over TMF, Pete Sampras. All of them had sledgehammer forehands, big serves and an intimidating on-court presence. Two of them (Sampras and Becker) were comfortable attacking the net, although none of them is an attacking player, per se.  And all three were men who'd experienced plenty of Warrior Moments.