Watercooler, 12/11

Mornin' everyone. Well, we had about a six-hour gabfest here yesterday, centered on A Champion's Mind. I am continually impressed by the level of knowledge in the Twibe (I like how Annie calls it, The Rez) and the quality of questions submitted by you was very high - not a single Did Pete Sampras ever play Dan Goldie? among them.

The way I fielded the questions was a little confusing (unavoidably). I felt I needed to repeat the question in my answer, so that meant continually scrolling back up after posting replies, to copy-and-paste in the next question (I answered in order). One frustrating thing about Typepad, I'm sure you all know, is that after you post a comment, the page refreshes back to the top of the post (instead to where you last were positioned).

So the process got a little crazy as I tried to keep up and I know I inadvertently skipped at least one good question (from Arun) along the way in the effort to provide meaningful answers and get all the questions done. I'm answering Arun's misplaced question right after I post this (over on the other thread). If you were left out, feel free to re-post your question (but no new questions, please) - I'll check back periodically today.

On to other matters: If you read my Apologies post, you'll know I spoke at length yesterday with the ATP's Kris Dent (Director of Corporate Communications). I thought that some of the things he said in defense of the ATP - but not by any means from a defensive or aggrieved posture - were valuable, and covered some issues and elements that are sometimes overlooked or ignored by critics, pundits, and commentators on tennis.

So I asked Kris to write an Open Letter to y'all, just to balance out my highly targeted comments on the nature of the ATP CEO job, and to more or less shed light on some of the issues I touched on in the Gridlock! post from the institutional point-of-view. I think you'll find Kris's thoughts interesting, and appreciate that he took the time to write so well-crafted and comprehensive a message. I'll post the letter later tomorrow morning, then I'll be in and out of the office (I have an afternoon meeting with Patrick McEnroe, and will do a post on that at some point over the weekend).

Remember, Jackie-Oh will sashay in later on with a Deuce Club post, so you'll have OT opportunities galore. And that reminds me, we haven't scheduled our TW Virtual Holiday Party yet. We'll do pretty much a noon to midnight deal (unless someone has a better idea), which ought to cover us with most time zones, and I'm tentatively scheduling it for this coming Monday (I'm on the road during the middle of the week). There will be fruit cake in abundance, and an assortment of fine beverages, including your favorite flavor of Kool-A. . .  never mind.

Another Twibe matter: Please remember to submit your nominations (to this email address) for our year-end TW awards (as in: The winner of the That Was Me, Headless at 2:34 award is. . . Aussiemarg!). You can check out last year's results here. I'd also like you to nominate your choices for poster-of-the-year (one male, one female, although sometimes the gender is guesswork), as well as TW Poet Laureate (the holder is Madame Highpockets).

Speaking of which - should we have an official contest to name our new PL (to date, we have a shortage of people who post comments in verse, blank or otherwise)? Here's a link to our original TW Armadillo Poetry Slam In case you'd like to get a feel for the nature of the competition. This year, we could narrow the scope and provide some stricter guidelines (perhaps even a pre-determined subject), to make it easier for our erstwhile poets to get to work. All this is stuff we can do during the holidays. Jackie-Oh and I will be discussing some of these things in the coming days.

Also next week, I'm thinking of running a few "TW Classic" posts - kind of a greatest hits of red-meat posts, including those turned out by guest contributors. That's partly becasuse I will be on the road (at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy) Tues. PM through Thurs. (I'll post on that trip, too, after if not during my visit). Does anybody think we're missing any blog-worthy subjects these days? Feel free to let me know if there's some particular cut of red meat that you find yourself craving.

Let's keep the Off-Topic chatter to a minimun until you've weighed in on these issues. . .

-- Pete