Weekend Crisis Center, 2/16

Pete Bodo is on vacation, Thurs. Feb. 14th to Monday, Feb 25th. Meanwhile, enjoy the guest posts!]

By TW Contributing Editor, Andrew

(Photo by Richard Dibb.  You can see more examples of my colleague Richard's work at his Flickr account.  And yes, he really is six foot eight.)

In a classic episode of "Northern Exposure," "Spring Break," the end of the frigid Alaskan winter leads to strange behavior from Fleischman, Maggie and the other good folks of Cicely.

A 45 degrees F burst of warm air just struck Calgary, and I'm seeing weird things myself.  Celine singing "River Deep, Mountain High."  Super Mario! knocking off Rocking Robin.  "cliff d" writing "Samantha must be hot!" mash notes in the comments section of this blog.

It feels as though the long winter break is slowly ending, and the ice is breaking up.  In swift succession, we're about to have two star-studded ATP tournaments at Rotterdam and Dubai, then Indian Wells and the "fifth major," Miami.  And after Miami comes the European clay court season, when spring will be well and truly upon us.

But this weekend has many treats in store.  Justine Henin bids to win a tournament on home soil in Antwerp.  At Delray Beach, Kei Nishikori, a (barely) 18 year old qualifier from Japan broke up an all American SF line up: Nishikori takes on the comparative veteran third seed Sam Querrey, who put down versifyin' Vince Spadea 6-2 6-4 on Friday.

In the Brazil Open, there could be a Sunday final between the No 1 and No 2 seeds, Carlos Moya and Nicolas Almagro.  Almagro is one of my dark horse candidates for a breakout 2008, along with Juan Monaco.  And in Marseille, 2006's breakout player Marcos Baghdatis will try to put an end to the surge of Mario Ancic.  That may be the match of the weekend.

Enjoy the matches, everyone.  Please use the Deuce Club for general off topic posts, and use this thread for tennis-related conversation.