The Watercooler

Mornin' folks. This will be your Watercooler post for today, so you can jawbone about the matches as they're played in the Antipodal region of the world. I just finished a post for ESPN, on what the first week of the new year bodes for the Australian Open.

BTW, the wild cards for the AO were announced today, and I see that Jelena Dokic, whose latest comeback may be getting a little traction (talk about miracles!), is not on the list. How's this for an irony: as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), Dokic may need to pull out of the Hobart event, where she's a nice little win over Martina Muller, in order to play the AO qualifying. I see that there are at least four wild cards for the AO qualifying still to be awarded. How about a break for Jelena, as she tries to rise above her station as tennis's outstanding cautionary tale?

Also,  I just received an email from one of Pete Sampras's folks, Grant Chen (the fastest gun in the west, when it comes to hammering out text messages). Tickets went on sale today for the Roger Federer vs. Pete Sampras exhibition in March, so if you have any interest in attending, this would be a good time to score a good ducat. Just go to Ticketmaster, type "Federer" or "Sampras" in the Search box, and you should be in business. Prepare to spend between 50 bucks and a cool grand for a ticket.

And now, some houskeeping issues:

You may remember that comment poster VE seemed to think it was me, rather than Heidi, describing my life as that of a "princess" in the last Deuce Club post. The confusion was caused by the fact that, like all guest posters, Heidi was only identified as the author of that post in the customary tag-line at the end. I'm not insecure about my masculinity -  honest!!!!- but I realized that, as per VE's suggestion, it would be better to identify guest posters right up top. So we are adopting the classic, MSM by-line (as you saw at the current Monday Net Post).

So as of now, we will be running standard by-lines by any guest contributor, up at the top of every post. Also, I thought it would be more professional of us to assign titles to contributors. So there will be three types of by-lines:

TennisWorld Contributing Editor - We presently have three contributing editors: Andrew, Rosangel, and Ed McGrogan. These are TW regulars who write regularly, who have covered (or will cover) events with a TW credential, and whom I call upon in times of need to keep things running smoothly,

Tennisworld Contributing Writer - This will apply to professional or serious amateur writers who contribute to TW, including Asad Raza/Ray Stonada, Andrew Friedman/Rolo Tomassi, Heidi, and others.

TennisWorld Guest Contributor - This by-line will be for members of the TWibe who periodically attend a tournament or send along something I publish as a full-on post. Past GCs have included GVgirl, Embug, Slice' n Dice, Tari, AmyLu Viv, Todd and in Charge, Codepoke (I know I'm forgetting some, let me know!). . .

Update on Australian Open coverage. I am not going to Melbourne this year. Tom Perrotta will be covering the event at his String Theory blog, for the  entire two weeks. I'm taking a break for reasons relating mainly to my family, and the minor hardships that the long trip Down Under can create. No special reason for this, now, and I will be making the trip again next year. I am looking forward to covering the event from New York; I may end up writing quite a bit about the television coverage and issues related to it. I also will, at some point, have a live chat at TW with Tom. I'm thinking mid-tournament would be a good time to have this live chat.

Lastly, you probably saw that our Sunday match-calling thread, except during Masters or Grand Slam weeks, will be called Sunday Brunch With . . . (fill in appropriate name). I mentioned in the first of those posts on Sunday that I would like readers to contribute themes and topics for Sunday Brunch discussions until the match-calling gets rolling. I want to clarify that the topic doesn't have to be tennis-related, or even sports related, although it's probably best if it's one or the other (as in, Will that Brady-to-Moss long touchdown pass, after they flubbed the same play on the previous down, go down as the one of the  greatest plays in NFL history?).

And those SB posts will work best if you just tell a little about who you are, why you care about that play, etc. No need to write volumes, either. Just identify yourself and throw out an observation, and we'll see if it generates a lot of brunch gab.