Weekend Crisis Center 8.12

Morning all. As most of you will know, Pete is still on vacation. This is the Tribe's daily post for discussing the tennis in Montreal and Los Angeles. In the men's final, Roger Federer faces Novak Djokovic. The current world number four (to become number three on Monday) has now convincingly beaten the number three and number two on successive days, and faces the number one, never having beaten him before.

When Federer and Djokovic last faced each other, in the quarterfinals in Dubai earlier this year, the score was 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3 in Federer's favour. My memory of that match is that Federer was pushed hard, but also wasn't at his best, with his forehand in particular being wayward. Both serve and forehand have been firing more smoothly this week than they were then, and of course he is the favourite to win today. But Djokovic exudes confidence right now - today's match should be a real test of how far he has developed in the past six months. I can't help recalling how often he and Andy Murray were mentioned as being in the same category of young challengers earlier in the year, but even before Murray's injury forced him off the tour for three months, Djokovic was pulling ahead of him.

Later on, of course, there is the final between Ana Ivanovic and Nadia Petrova - the former reaching it after her fierce fightback to take the semifinal away from Jelena Jankovic yesterday, and the latter having a walkover into the final after Maria Sharapova withdrew citing a leg strain.

If that's not enough to talk about, there's always the Cincy qualifiers or main draw. Word is that after considering this week's frustrating return to the tour, and the possibility of withdrawal from further pre-US Open tournaments, Andy Murray is intending to play in Cincy, though he's still not able to use his wrist fully, and is therefore highly unlikely to match his Fed-beating performance of 2006; even beating Marcos Baghdatis in round 1 may be a step too far.

-- Rosangel