Your Call, 1.10

Any questions?

That pretty much sums up my reaction to Andy Murray's win in Doha yesterday, today, or whenever the hail it was. He isn't playing again until the Australian Open, which is a good thing - his scheduling was wise, and that could pay off for Murray in Melbourne. He'll be going into the Australian Open as the man to beat, which might sound like heresy. It would be, had Murray not put up the results he has so far in 2009. Events are unfolding the way they might have if Judy, Jamie, Neil Harman and Andy had put their heads together to write a script. That's not a prediction, btw. It's just a realistic assessment of the state of things - and in tennis, the state of things is always subject to quick-strike change.

It wasn't exactly a bummer of a week for Andy Roddick, either. Murray handled him with relative ease in the final, but getting to that stage is bound to help Roddick as he fights his rear-guard action to stay in the mix at the top. The results out of Chennai have been less sensational, but they merit comment: Marin Cilic, perhaps the most dangerous player not to have been a focal point of attention since the last US Open, will be playing Somdev Devvarman, of India, in the Chennai final. Devvarman is a two-time NCAA champ. Months ago, a loyal reader wrote asking me to write a post on the sad fact that despite winning the most prestigious US collegiate title twice (Devvarman, who's 23, played for the University of Virginia), the USTA did not see fit to reward Devvarman with a wild card into the US Open.

Devvarman is taking shape as an interesting story; I don't know what his status is for the Australian Open, but I do know that the Melbourne organizers have yet to award a bunch of the discretionary wild cards (a number of them have been pre-assigned in tit-for-tat arrangements with various parties, including the USTA). Given that the Australian Open likes to bang its own drum as "the Grand Slam of Asia-Pacific", it seems a terrific opportunity for Tennis Australia to put a wild card where its mouth is, by offering one to Devvarman. I'm going to find out more about this kid; I'd be interested to know why, given his age, he decided to stick it out at UVA. Enjoy your Sunday - mine will be spent plowing snow up here in game-rich Andes, where we're supposed to get 10-inches overnight.

PS - Getty Images doesn't have a single image of him. It figures. I'll have to publish one of Cilic instead.

-- Pete