The Orange Bowl

by Savannah

I've been one of the people whining about the state of American tennis so I feel it my duty to report when American juniors do well at a major junior tennis tournament.

The Orange Bowl followed hard on the heels of the Eddie Herr tournament and saw many of the players who won there fall. Yuki Bhambri of India prevented an American sweep of the finals. Maybe things aren't as bad as I thought and in a couple of years these young men and women will be moving up the pro ranks.

For complete coverage please visit Zoo Tennis Colette Lewis site for everything junior in tennis.


Julia Boserup


Yuki Bhambri


Asia Muhammad and Laura Embree


Devin Britton and Jarmere Jenkins

Exhibitions and Wild Card Playoffs

• The Australian Open Wild Card Playoff has begun. A few things to note about it. It's free. F-R-E-E. 
  

It is also a true tournament. It has a round robin format and draws from the junior and professional ranks. So far the highly touted juniors Jessica Moore and Bernard Tomic have been shown the door. Moore may have a wild card into the main draw. Tomic was defeated by a twenty four year old who plays mostly Futures. After his father showed his ass a week or so ago Tennis Australia is still debating what if anything should be done, especially since the elder Tomic issued an apology.

The United States Australian Open Wild Card playoff features four men. Just sayin'.

Exhibitions 

• Juan Monaco won the Copa Argentina over Gaston Gaudio. Gaudio played pretty good tennis on his way to the final overcoming Feliciano Lopez, one of Spain's Davis Cup heroes. He is said to be looking at a comeback in 2009.
  

• Florian Mayer won the German Masters event. 
  

• A much anticipated showcase match between Marat Safin and Novak Djokovic at St Anton did not take place. Marat withdrew with a ligament injury. Janko Tipsarevic played in his place and won. Philipp Kohlschreiber won the mens final. Patricia Mayr won the women's event.
  

• The Paris Masters event starts this Thursday December 18. Tsonga has withdrawn but the field is still pretty strong. It features a round robin format.
  

Davis Cup and Fed Cup 2009

Tickets are on sale for the Fed Cup tie between the United States and Argentina as of December 15. The tie will be held in Surprise, Arizona at the club run by John Austin, brother of Tracey.

Spain will play it's tie against Serbia in the Valencian city of Benidorm. It's a resort town featuring nice beaches and is of course at sea level. No news yet on where the Davis Cup tie between the United States and Switzerland will take place. If Andy Roddick has any say it'll be in Texas, probably in San Antonio. 

Tennis Talk

by Savannah

According to the calendar the official season is over. All players, male and female, can rest up and prepare for the new season starting with the Hopman Cup exhibition, the traditional start to Week 1 of the New Year.

For those of us who follow the sport with more than a passing interest we know that the Exhibition Season follows the regular season like night follows day. Of course there's no official exhibition season. You have to really hunt around to find out who is playing where. If you're lucky you'll find out for how much cheese. Every now and then you'll find a live feed that features play from somewhere and your tennis jones, for the most part, takes what it's being fed as you mark days off the calendar.

So why am I anxious for December 18 and the First Masters de France BNP Paribas that will be held in Toulouse, France? Could it be the line up? Let's see. Jo Wilfried Tsonga, Paul Henri Mathieu, Gilles Simon, Julien Benneteau, Adrian Mannarino, Nicolas Mahut and Marc Gicquel are confirmed. Oh yeah, and Richard Gasquet got himself a wild card into the event. How dare they hold a party without him? All the top Frenchies in one round robin event. I think that's kind of cool. Please check The Official Site for information. Be warned that it's in French only so far.

Not to be outdone Argentina is staging it's own internal championship starting on December 11. It will feature Juan Monaco, Jose Acasuso, Agustin Calleri, Guillermo Canas, Juan Ignacio Chela, Carlos Moya, Feliciano Lopez and David Nalbandian. Juan Martin del Potro was scheduled but has dropped out.
After all the drama surrounding the Davis Cup final this should be quite interesting. I'm waiting to see how the players are split into the groups of four. I don't have a website for this yet but I'll update this post as soon as I do.

Spain is presenting two large exhibitions. The first one will begin on December 6 and will feature Fernando Verdasco, Nicolas Almagro, Tommy Robredo, Albert Montanes, Marcel Granollers, Oscar Hernandez, Ivan Navarro and Daniel Gimeno-Traver, all top 100 players from Spain.

The Masters Of Bilbao will be held the following week beginning December 12 and will feature David Ferrer, Fernando Verdasco, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Nicolas Almagro, Marcel Granollers, Tommy Robredo, Alberto Montanes and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez.

The United States doesn't hold events like these but there is tennis being played. Andy Roddick's annual charity event will take place December 6 and the Rock-n-Racquets charity events in Louisville, Kentucky, Columbia, South Carolina and Knoxville, Tennessee take place the following weekend. For details see the Official Site.
Who said there's a tennis off season?

More Davis Cup Fallout
I hope you noticed the link provided by "Pat" last week to an Argentine newspaper article on the continuing turmoil in the wake of the DC final and David Nalbandian's role in the drama. I took French in high school and can pretty much read anything in that language if I take my time. I can decipher Spanish if I try hard. In reading the article "Pat" provided I came across what seemed to be some rather startling information and knew I needed a Spanish speaker to translate the article for me. I turned to a tennishead who lives in Argentina and goes by the name "Drop-Shot" for help. He provided the translation and clarified some things. Where he felt clarification was needed he added explanations in parenthesis with an asterisk.

Nalbandian – JMDP: a Millionaire Fight

“Go tell your daddy to come and ask for your money, kid.”, said Nalbandian to JMDP on Thursday night, when the players, only a few hours away from the beginning of the tie against Spain, still hadn’t resolved the economic issue. Other witnesses go further and add that the cordobese (*native from Cordoba province), even treated JMDP (*tandilense referse to his home town of Tandil in Buenos Aires) as a “wuss”. Hard to prove, of course. But the truth of the matter is that the DC final had not yet begun, Argentina still felt like the overwhelming favorite against Spain and the intern (*as internal issues) amongst the country’s two top players was already installed.

The roots of the problem were the supposed caprices of Nalbandian, increasingly being looked out of the corner of the eyes of the other argentines, specially JMDP. But the first to last drop that would make the dam break (the last one would be the loss of the tie of course) was a problem about money. A lot of money. Nalbandian pressed more and above for the tie to be played in Cordoba. He shielded himself in a presumed federalism (*in Argentina there’s a big issue about Buenos Aires vs. The Rest of the country. Something like the US East coast vs West coast.), but reality pointed towards a matter of money. One of his sponsors, the Bank of Cordoba, was willing to give their strong man many millions. How many? In the province there was talk about 2 million for Nalbandian alone. “The only one who wanted to play against Spain in Cordoba was Nalbandian. The rest of us didn’t really care.”, said other players of the Argentina Legion (*refers to all Argentine tennis players, the same way they call the Spanish, The Armada.). “Mar del Plata is also part of the country.”, had answered Calleri. And some saw a slip (*as in Freudian) when Nalbandian found out that Mar del Plata had been chosen: “(they) Put an envelope.”, suggested the cordobese.

But Nalbandian lost the venue because an entity from Bs. As., on behalf of Daniel Scioli, paid the Argentine Tennis Asociation (ATA) 9,600,000 dollars. (*not pesos!), 300,000 more than Cordoba was offering. The Unquillo native never accepted his defeat and, according to his detractors, kept on asking for more money up to the day before the final. This is what the ATA’s president, Enrique Morea, was referring to when he said of Nalbandian: “The players don’t have love for the country, let this be clear. There are many self interests.”
(...)
The fistfight between Calleri and Nalbandian was a journalistic invention: the red plates (*refers to a practice of a yellow news channel) are easy to release and the rest of the channels copied as to not be left outside. Both were angry, as is logic, for having lost. But, beyond some insult to the wind, David grabbed his bag and left.
(...)
The internal issue between Del Potro and Nalbandian was exposed, but most play in favor of the Tandil native. Guillermo Cañas is one of them. In the ambient it is said that David gave Cañas the thumbs down because he hit him (accidentally) with a tennis ball during a practice before the semis with Russia, after which Nalbandian was heard to say “What are you doing, fucking/shitty nigger?” (*VERY IMPORTANT, here Nigger isn’t used in a racial way, more so in social way. It refers to the poor, the poor who steal, to their demeanor and habits, etc Maybe comparable with trailer park scum or ghetto people. “De mierda” derives shit, being mierda, shit. “Mierda!” is the same as saying “Shit!” in all contexts.)
(...)
Phrases such as “He thinks he’s at Vilas’ level.”, “He believes to be Maradona or Ginobili” are commonly being used to refer to Nalbandian's actions. The press conference that the Cordobese gave yesterday in Mar del Plata was qualified as “staged”. Few bought it. Of course, David denies all these versions and repeats the word “envy”.

The original link in Spanish is HERE

Idle Chit Chat

• It's reported that Ana Ivanovic has purchased a 4.5 million Euro villa on Mallorca.
  

• The new WTA roadmap has seemingly claimed it's first victim. The Berlin event, long a fixture on the WTA calendar seems to be in danger due to lack of interest from the Qatar Tennis Federation which purchased the event in 2004. The event is downgraded on next years WTA calendar and is scheduled to take place a week before the French Open making it less likely to attract a stellar field. Interests in Warsaw Poland are said to be looking to buy the event. If this takes place that means two major German events, Hamburg and Berlin are taking major hits.
  

• Now that he's in the top four Andy Murray is suddenly into making nice. He had this to say in the British papers this past weekend.
  

"Federer, when I see him, I'll have a chat to him – Nadal, Djokovic, Roddick, all of them. Obviously when we get on court we're rivals, but I think the one thing that has been much better in tennis the last few years has been the sportsmanship. A lot of players are very complimentary about each other, the embracing at the end of matches because a lot of the tennis has been so good. I think that's something that tennis has got to be proud of over the last few years."
Gotcha Andy.

The idea of present WTA head honcho Larry Scott taking over as head of the ATP as part of a deal to give him control of both tours has resurfaced with a vengeance. I guess the people behind him think if it's repeated enough fans will accept it. Personally I think this is a horrible idea. Keep in mind we're talking about the Larry Scott who labeled one player "golden" and said that no one was losing any sleep over Justine Henin's "retirement". It's my opinion that because of his support for one player above all the other women that the WTA is in the state it's in now. A leopard doesn't change it's spots and I'm sure the same tactics would be used if he somehow got control of the ATP. It also doesn't give me a warm fuzzy to know that Justin Gimelstob was lobbying Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in Shanghai. Maybe he thinks his charm will result in the two players supporting an American to take DeVilliers position. Scott is presently the highest paid women's sports executive and made more than DeVilliers last year. To what extent is the ATP board willing to pay him to take over the tour if that's what they want to do? We're in December so we should know soon.

The Week in Review 11/18 - 11/24/2007

by Savannah

Let me see. What was going on in the crazy world of tennis this past week that warrants tennisheads attention? The official off season has started. The Davis Cup Final between Russia and the United States begins next week and oh yeah, the Exhibition Season has started. The exho (or exo) season is when tennis players stop being money grubbing point whores and become simply money grubbers. Hey, their careers are short and they're entitled to get all the moolah they can while they can. So lets see who had their sticky little fingers in the cookie jar this past week.

Rafael Nadal vs Richard Gasquet

Nice little deal. Richie played a one off against Rafa in Kuala Lumpur. Richie won the first set and Rafa won the next two. Looks like it was fun for both players. Rafa won 3-6, 6-2, 6-3.

(Thanks to MariaV over on MTF)

Pete Sampras vs Roger Federer

This was the Main Event this week. Sampras, who has been encouraged to return to the main tour signed up for this three match series which promised to be the throw down of the Exhibition Season for the ATP. The WTA plays exhibition matches too but when you have the man some consider the GOAT playing the man who wants that title then the floodgates open and money pours into the players bank accounts.
Exhibitions are usually scripted affairs. Usually running three sets it goes roughly like this:
Player "A" wins the first set. Player "B" wins the second set and then the third set is "for real".
This was a three match event so many tennisheads thought that the usual script would hold. In a weird bizarro world way it did.
The first match was played in Seoul South Korea and Roger won rather handily. It seems to be all the rage to appear in public in traditional Korean Royal attire. Venus and Maria Kirilenko set the precedent so how could Pete and Roger not do the same?

The second match was in Kuala Lumpur (A Challenger event was going on at the same time but really, when you have the tennis equivalent of Ali vs Frazier the guys fighting to get their rankings high enough to get into the Oz main draw really can't hold a candle to that can they?). The King of Malaysia showed up looking like he was going to a tennis match. It's refreshing to see royalty kick back and chill with the people although in a place like Malaysia I doubt if the people in the stadium were your average Joe's and Jane's.

That's the King between Roger and Pete. The other guy is a politician.
Roger won this match in straights as well but it was a closer affair with each set going to a tiebreak.
The final match of the series was played at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Macau. I wanted to watch it figuring that Sampras was set to win at least one of these but with no Tennis Channel and every live feed shut out of this I waited to find someone online giving recaps. Zero. Zip. Nada.
Very odd I thought to myself. While hanging out on boards waiting for something to be posted Haruka casually informed me that Sampras had won the first set in a tie break 7-6(8). Her friend Gian has Tennis Channel and was feeding her the scores. Whatever it takes I figured. When the score for the second set came in 6-4 Sampras I expected fan boards to be flooded with fans discussing this event. That's not quite what happened. The ESPN board, a place I haven't been in a while has, as I type this, a grand total of 14 posts between two threads. TalkAboutTennis(TAT) has a few posts in it's "Exhibitions" thread. Mens Tennis Forums has a pretty active thread and was also the first to put up the results. The discussion seems to be that the court was "icy" and comparable to an indoor court in the 1990's. Roger was "tired" after a long season spent defending his throne. The same man who complained about the court in Madrid being too slow after Nalbandian handed him his ass and after he was supposedly consulted on it is said to have played tentatively for fear of injury in Macau. Besides, there's another exhibition set for March in New York City's Madison Square Garden the argument goes and Sampras had to win one to make it interesting for the paying public. Uh-huh.
The Roger fans are also saying that the result came about because of the "scripting" of exhibitions and that this is the one Roger was paid to lose. Some Roger fans say this is nonsense because Roger has too much pride and would never consent to losing a match, exhibition or not. There is also the argument that hey, this is only an exhibition match. Means nothing. Moving on.
It's still relatively quiet on the boards though.


Davis Cup Final

Let's be real. It's Shamil Tarpishev vs Patrick McEnroe. There wasn't any visa hanky panky this go around and Mr Tarpishev is in the States with his team.

The official line ups were announced this week.

USA
James Blake
Bob Bryan
Mike Bryan
Andy Roddick
Captain: Patrick McEnroe

Russia
Igor Andreev
Nikolay Davydenko
Dmitry Tursunov
Mikhail Youzhny
Captain: Shamil Tarpischev

There will be daily recaps by mmmm8 and GVGirl who will both be in attendance. MMMM8 will be sitting with the Russian fans. GVGirl, a member of the Netheads, will be sitting with the American contingent.

By the way Marat Safin is said to be in Portland.

In more Davis Cup news the 2008 Draw has been announced. Some surfaces have also been decided.

Russia v Serbia: Small Sports Arena "Luzhniki", Moscow, Russia - surface tbc (indoors)

Czech Republic v Belgium: CEZ Arena, Ostrava, Czech Republic - carpet (indoors)

Argentina v Great Britain: Estadio Parque Roca, Buenos Aires, Argentina - clay (outdoors)

Israel v Sweden: Canada Stadium, Ramat Hasharon, Israel - hard (outdoors)

Germany v Korea. Rep.: Volkswagen Halle Braunschweig - clay (indoors)

Peru v Spain: details to be confirmed (Who are we kidding about the surface here?)

Romania v France: details to be confirmed

Austria v USA: Ferry Dusika Hallenstadion, Vienna, Austria - clay (indoors)

Davis Cup Information


In Other News

Gael Monfils has rejoined Team Lagadere in France and has been assigned Thierry Champion as his coach. Mr. Champion was working with Paul-Henri Mathieu and it goes without saying Mr. Mathieu is not happy with the change. This ends Gael's work with Tariq Benhabiles who is now free to coach one Andy Murray if he's got the stomach for it. While no one was surprised that Murray and Gilbert didn't last long I wonder if Tariq wants to put up with being cursed at and out on a regular basis?
I wonder if Andy Roddick will man up and rehire Tariq who had him playing an all court, all surface game before he was unceremoniously kicked to the curb? We'll see.

Tommy Haas was not poisoned but he did have shoulder surgery. Talk about being a drama king...

Rafael Nadal thinks it would be a good idea to rotate the surfaces the Masters Cup is played on. This of course brought howls of protest from the Hard Court Specialists who go into a dead faint when confronted with a surface resembling the terre batue. Since the TMC will be WTF in 2009 I say wtf why not?

Michael Chang is no longer coaching Peng Shuai. He still wants to run the Chinese Tennis Authority but it seems they don't feel that way about him.

The field for the Gold Coast event in January 2008 is shaping up. Among those confirmed to be appearing are Nicole Vaidisova, Shahar Pe'er, Dinara Safina and Amelie Mauresmo.

The exhibition to be held in Hong Kong's Victoria Park from January 2-5 will so far feature the following players:
Venus Williams
Maria Sharapova
Ana Ivanovic
Peng Shuai
Caroline Wozniacki
There are rumors about Anna Chakvetadze joining the mix but nothing is confirmed yet.

The Hopman Cup teams are finalized.

Group A
Serbia
Jelena Jankovic
Novak Djokovic

Czech Republic
Lucie Safarova
Tomas Berdych

Argentina
Gisela Dulko
Juan Ignacio Chela

India
Sania Mirza
Rohan Bopanna


Group B

USA
Serena Williams
Mardy Fish

France
Tatiana Golovin
Gael Monfils

Australia
Alicia Molik
Peter Luczak

Chinese Taipei
Su-Wei Hsieh
Yen-Hsun Lu

For Order of Play information please visit the Official Hopman Cup Site

• Lindsay Davenport is scheduled to play in Auckland.

• I'd like to give a shout out to TAT and it's holiday charity drive. Donations will go to two charities - Justin Gimelstob's Children's Fund (The Valerie Fund) and the Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program. This is a unique undertaking by tennis fans. For more information please use the above link.

The Shallow End of the Pool

Boris Becker celebrated his 40th birthday this week. Just before the inevitable party he announced that he and his latest lady were no more. They looked so in love during Oktoberfest.

Only Boris could have a party where his ex wife and sons and the recently ex girlfriend appear and he leaves with a woman who could be the clone of his wife and is so far nameless. Rock on dude.
Boris and Barbara Feltus (and son)

A more demurely attired Sharley 'Lilly' Kerssenberg

The mystery woman

The Mystery Woman and Ms Feltus

All pictures courtesy of the Daily Mail