Skewed News of the Day

by Pete Bodo

Mornin', everyone. Hope you're all primed for a great weekend. It doesn't get much better than it is right now here in the northeastern U.S., where the hardwoods are in full, autumnal color (at least at elevation). You hear a lot about the leaves turning color earlier or later depending on ambient conditions like temperature and relative dryness, but the process is mainly photo-periodic. As the path of the sun shifts, so does the color of the trees—and, incidentally, the breeding urge in many mammals including whitetail deer.

There you go.

I must say, my eyebrow twitched when I saw that Robin Soderling was knocked out of Kuala Lampur by Andrey Golubev, who coincidentally got a shot of ink here a week ago, owing to Kazakhstan having crashed the Davis Cup World Group for 2011. I'm expecting a lot out of Soderling this fall. The surfaces in play will largely suit his game and he's a great example of your everyday working stiff, tennis-division, albeit of the highest order. That means he's more likely to spend time bagging ranking points while so many of his colleagues are running out of steam and whining about the length of the calendar, in this sport that has no season.

It somehow seems fitting that on the same day, Tomas Berdych was also eliminated; Soderling and Berdych could be sold as matching end tables, or bookends. Berdych was taken out by David Ferrer, who may be putting together a late-season run. Tough little fella, that Ferrer. Actually, this Malaysian event is shaping up as a good little tournament—Mikhail Youzhny also prevailed over Marcos Baghdatis in a three-setter. The first two sets were close. Youzhny lost a tiebreaker 7-5, but then won the following set, 7-5. I didn't see the match, but the 6-1 final set suggests that Baghdatis ran out of gas, even though he's been known to sport a big, conspicuous tank.

And did you see that Justine Henin is making her official return to tennis on Dec. 9, at the now almost institutionalized "Diamond Games" exhibition in Antwerp, Belgium?  Henin will be playing her domestic rival **Kim Clijsters—**surprise!—with Yanina Wickmayer and Francesca Schiavone on the undercard.

You've got to hand it to those Belgians, they're working their two stars—and particularly Global Motherhood Ambassador Kim Clijsters—like government mules. Didn't Kim just play Serena Williams, dangling foot and all, in the Intergalactic All-Time Women's Championships, or some such thing? Hey, it's all fine by me. Anything that puts fannies in seats and brings the game into the public eye, right?  I did get a laugh out of the inclusion of Schiavone in this otherwise all-Belgian crew. What is she, the token hot-blood in the mix here? I assume the match will be designed or rigged to produce a Henin-Clijsters showdown for the home town multitudes, so maybe they should rename it the Beat Up on the Italian Classic.

Venus Williams has joined her sister Serena and Clijsters in the growing "just say no to the Roadmap" movement. All three of them are taking a pass on the final premier mandatory event of the year, Beijing—ranking points, WTA race to Doha (wherever that is), year-end rankings and prize money be danged. Venus says she has a bad knee and Serena is still recovering from surgery, while Clijsters is making funny faces at Jada while whipping up a nice breakfast for her family.

You know what? The Chinese have a pretty highly developed sense of protocol and propriety—the concept of "face" and all that. And they're pretty good at playing hardball. I would love to be a fly on the wall when they meet to discuss the field they attracted to Beijing. The WTA is going to pay heavily for this perceived slight and I'm not sure they'll be all that understanding when the WTA plays the injury card—whatever the condition of the missing players.

Beijing was conceived as a crown jewel tournament—the major beach head for the WTA's invasion of Asia. Now it seems like just another tournament in a far-flung place (for most WTA pros) that's very tempting to skip. And the "Premier Mandatory" status of the event, and all the bells and whistles that go with it, isn't going to do a thing to sway the decisions of those players disinclined to make the trip. It comes down to this: the players who can really benefit from playing in Asia (like Caroline Wozniacki, in her low-key but very real hunt for the No. 1 ranking, and Maria Sharapova and Elena Dementieva, who need ranking points) will make the swing. Those who are well-positioned, suffering from nagging if not necessarily critical injuries, or sufficiently secure in their careers in a general sense can feel—and rightly, I think—that all or part of the Asian swing is a kind of "extra credit" proposition.

It seems that Larry Scott's WTA Roadmap, this vision of a well-marked trail on a relatively flat, smooth path from the beginning to the end of the WTA year, is seen by many as too arduous a road, a rough path featuring a few too many steeps sections, swamps and deadfall-laden cul de sacs. It was a good idea at the time, right, Larry?

And at the Thailand Open, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, a winner over emerging tennis cult hero Ernests Gulbis, is being thrown to the wolves in the semifinal. Or the wolf, at any rate—that being Rafael Nadal. The other semi will be decided between two surprise guests, Benjamin Becker and Jarkko Nieminen (and here I'd celebrated never having to double-checking that Finn's name again).

I don't know what's gotten into that boy from Majorca; will somebody please tell him the the U.S. Open is over (Pssst. . . you won it, dude!) and you can just put your feet up and relax for a while? But oh no, Nadal is still raining hell on opponents left and right. My theory: this is Rafa's world tour to show off my new serve, of which he's as proud as a fella who just bought his first new car. And understandably so.

"My serves keep working very well," Nadal remarked earlier this week.

We know, Rafa, we know.