G'Day Mate

(Steggy tells me that the Murray-Nadal match won't be shown on ESPN until tomorrow afternoon (Mon.) in the U.S. So I'm going to try to stay awake and match call it from here, for those of you who wish  to stay up. It will be late - it's second match on tonight, with Maria Sharapova going up against Vera Zvonereva in the opener - PB)

This will be quick and probably ugly (kind of like Nadal-Wawrinka the other night), as I want to catch some of Haas and Nalbandian before I focus on the Blake-Gonzalez match. No sooner did I walk into the press room and throw my gear on the desk when Miguel Seabra came up to greet me. He said he had someone he wanted to introduce me to, and waved a guy over - it was Bendou Zhang, TW's favorite Shanghai correspondent (his moniker was BD, if you remember). He's in the opposite row from me. I'm right next to Kamakshi of the mother ship, and Doug Robson of USA Today is one desk over.

Doug and I caught the end of the Patriots-Colts game on the NFL.com website. Tom Perrotta  of the New York Sun (dude's got game as a tennis writer; make sure you read him this week) joined us - we're off and running, folks!

It's a regular tennis writer party, and a big hello to everyone in the Tribe from some of the writers here. You have quite a few fans, you know.

Here's a tidbit from Miguel Seabra: In an interview on ABC-TV (Australia) aired before Novak Djokovic met Roger Federer,the Djoker apparently said, "I have only three words for Roger Federer: "He is going' down!" Federer was asked about this in his own presser andThe Mighty Fed handled the question with characteristic aplomb in a press conference with the German-Swiss, saying: Wow. Dude can't count can he?

Just kidding.

What Federer did say, according to my neighbor at desk 113, Marco Keller (tennis editor of SportInformation, a Swiss wire service), was, paraphrased in English: That's okay, It doesn't bother me a bit. In fact, I prefer to play the guys who have a little confidence, or who shoot their mouths off. . .

Then the TMF went out and sliced up Djoker. End of story.

I guess you all saw what Djokovic had up his sleeve, and it wasn't very much (I seem to have missed half the tournament, traveling). Now I'm intensely curious to see what Brad Gilbert and Andy Murray cook up for Andy's meeting tonight with Rafael Nadal. It had better be more than Stan the Man Wawrinka brought to table in the last match I had the misfortune of watching before I left for Melbourne. That one was more butt head than head butt; the blow-out epitomized all of the misgivings I have about the general sameness of the game today, and beautifully illustrated some of the issues and trends we explored in my post, The One-Ended Spectrum.

Leaving aside all the nuances of court speed and a generally unremarked but significant and fairly radical development of the present era (the devaluaton of the serve, both as a tool, which is the player's problem, and as the central stroke in the game, which is the strategist and coach's problem), Nadal vs. Wawrinka didn't even qualify as a train wreck of a match. There's nothing silly about a train wreck, and there was nothing but silly about the rallying contest we saw. What was Wawrinka thinking? Hey, I've got it! I'm going to keep the ball in play, move him around, engage him in long rallies, which I'll end by pulling the trigger on my most excellent backhand!

Good grief. But in a sick,exaggerated way, the match illustrated the ruling sensibility in the game today: Hit the ball hard. Then hit it harder. Last man standing wins! I keep wondering: how much worse could it have looked if Wawrinka decided to try something bold and different, like attacking at every opportunity? The answer I keep coming up with is that it would not only have not looked any worse, even if he got waxed, 0-1-1, it would have looked better, because it would  at least have seemed  that Wawrinka had Wilanders. Something to think about as  Murray-Nadal approaches tonight. . .

Uh-oh. Fernando Gonzalez just snatched the first set from Blake, while Nalbandian and Haas have just split. Final thought before I go out to catch some of each of those matches live:

Serena Williams is one, big, hunk of chocolate thunder (apologies to Daryll Dawkins). She is a human warrior moment. I think I've been as vociferous a critic of her approach to the game, and how it reflects on tennis in general, as anyone. And while you can certainly look at the way Williams has advanced here and read it as a tragicomic comment on the state of the women's game, there comes a point where you just have to tip your hat to Serena and stop blaming choking Nadia or high-strung Jelena; it isn't Williams' fault that her opponents begin quiverling like Jell-O the moment she steps on the court. Come to think of it, it's a singular attributed of Serena's, not theirs, that she elicits that reaction. And there is no greater weapon in tennis than that.