Serena defended her title in Miami after more than a few anxious moments.

Here in the U.S., everyone and their mother is obsessed with the final four this weekend. It’s the final event of the annual rite known as March Madness – the college basketball championships. To kick off the weekend, we had the women’s championships of the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami. Indian Wells and Miami have trouble getting U.S. television coverage because they have to fight for air time with March Madness. European coverage uses the U.S. feed so it’s a bad thing all round.

It’s unfortunate because all those people are missing out on seeing Serena Williams let go with a primal scream that is unmatched in the world of sports. Forget about button up college basketball coaches who never say anything that isn’t politically correct and young basketball players who seldom come up with anything beyond a variation on “We’re just worried about the next game.” How boring is that?

Give me the Queen of Mean and I mean that in the best possible way. When Serena is prowling the court, she is unbeatable. She let out more than one of those shattering primal screams while pummeling Justine Henin in the quarterfinal this week, 6-2, 6-0. Why is it, then, that her opponent in the Miami final, Jelena Jankovic, has a winning record of 3-2 over Serena coming into the match? The answer: Because she outlasts Serena and she almost did it again today.

You always hear about Jelena holding beating back multiple match points and playing heroic, come from behind matches. She did it at the Australian Open on more than one occasion and she did it here against Sofie Arvidsson. She came back from 1-5 in the third set to get to the tiebreaker then survived five match points in the tiebreaker to beat Arvidsson in the second round. It is heroic but she wouldn’t need to be so heroic if she improved her serve. There’s no need to fight back from 1-5 if you hold your serve now and then.

The scene was set for yet another heroic win as Serena broke Jelena quickly and often. She broke her twice in the first set to win it 6-1 then broke her again in her first two service games in the second set.

There’s another reason Jelena suffers through those long matches: she plays too defensively. But when she plays against Serena she has no choice, she has to be aggressive else the match is over quickly. Jelena hit an inside out backhand on the line with Serena serving at 3-0 in the second set and Serena threw in a few errors to go down a break. Finally, Jelena was starting to crawl back into the match.

She came up with an inside out forehand on the line in the next game and things were looking up even more. She faced more break points but she held on. Jelena has started working with a conditioning and strength coach to improve her strength but I have to say, I don’t quite understand the thing about needing more strength to serve better. Of course it takes strength and she is almost 5ft10in (177cm) while only weighing 130lb (59kg), but one of the keys to a strong serve is wrist snap. At that height, she should be able to get some snap on the ball instead of just rolling the ball in as she currently does. And she’s got plenty of flexibility which is also a key to serving well. All match long you see her drop into the splits and it’s not those painful splits you used to see in Kim Clijsters’ games, Jelena does it effortlessly.

And if Jelena doesn’t have a strong serve, then she should put some twist and turn on it like Rafael Nadal does. Come to think of it, she may be having the same problem Rafa has: he’s a switch hitter. Rafa is naturally right-handed and plays left-handed and it makes his serve a bit awkward. Jelena is naturally left-handed but she plays right-handed.

I don’t really understand why players do the switch hitting thing, do you? I suppose it’s because some young kids feel more comfortable hitting a tennis ball with their offhand but kids also don’t do a lot of serving. Has anyone ever served with one hand and hit a one-handed forehand with the other? I suppose not because the player would have to slip the serving hand up the racket at the end of the serve to let the offhand take over on the forehand side. All the more reason I’d discourage a young player from switch hitting.

Jelena was still down a break when Serena served for the second set at 5-4 and self-destructed. She hit a double fault and put some balls into the net to lose her serve at love. In the next game, Serena couldn’t convert three break points then lost her serve and the set, 7-5. She kept hitting balls into the net and she was huffing and puffing a bit. Was she tired? This was only her third tournament of the year after all.

If so, Jelena was in even worse shape. After losing her serve at the beginning of the third set, she called for the trainer. She’d been suffering with an upper respiratory infection because she hasn’t seen a tournament she doesn’t like yet and therefore wears herself out by playing too much.

Serena recovered her serve and her movement while Jelena did not and that translated into a 5-0 lead for Serena in the third set. And that’s where we found ourselves when Jelena kicked in her usual script. Serena was serving for the match at 5-0 when Jelena started moving her around the court. Jelena couldn’t convert two breaks points and Serena had her first match point – or should I say that Jelena fought off the first of what would be many break points.

Jelena smashed a backhand return winner down the line and started whacking the ball on every point. Unbelievably, she fought off four more match points to get to 3-5. She didn’t fight them off as much as Serena gave them to her. Serena got the dreaded recreational player disease know as finishing too soon – she wanted the match to be over before it was over and it took her out of her rhythm. She hit numerous balls long as if pummeling the ball would somehow end the match sooner.

This is how she put it after the match:

Well, at that point, more or less it’s me just like feeling like I’m almost there. Or, God, I would hate to lose this match after being up so much. I think that’s more of the emotion. Like, How am I going to sleep tonight? “How many Ambien do I have in case I lose this match” type of situation?

Jelena fought off two more match points serving at 3-5 before, finally, on Serena’s eighth match point, it was all over. The script took an alternative ending for Jelena this time.

Believe it or not, Serena actually drops from number 8 to number 10 after winning this title. It sounds completely ridiculous but it’s actually straightforward. Serena won this tournament last year and she needed to win it again to keep from losing points. She didn’t lose points but others players below her gained points by improving their results over last year and so they jumped past her.

By my count, this is the first time since 2004 that Serena has defended a title and that was Miami too. She did win two Tier I titles last year, though, so she’s making her way back into a consistently respectable form and that is a nice ending too.

Mikhail Youzhny pulls a van Gogh, websites charge more for recorded matches, and Rafael Nadal improves his hard court game.

Mikhail Youzhny made like van Gogh in his match against Nicolas Almagro in Miami and I wanted to say one more thing about it. Youzhny was none too happy and he smashed his racket against his forehead and opened up a wound from which blood gushed then ran down his face (you can see it in Nate’s post here. Youzhny walked over to his seat and the trainer ran over to help him. Almagro was very sweet – he came over to see if Youzhny was alright. When he got there, Youzhny looked up with a sheepish smile and both of them started laughing because, really, what else could you say?

I’ve seen on court rages that were stunning mainly because I couldn’t believe a chair umpire or a tournament or a professional sports organization would put up with such abuse – do I need to mention the name John McEnroe? That was before I sufficiently understood the star system and I didn’t really get that until the tour started penalizing McEnroe on the down side of his career. I was going to say that people got tired of his act but that wasn’t it, they weren’t tired of him, he just wasn’t winning any more. He used to throw tantrums to upset his opponent when he felt the momentum change or he fell behind, but after his play declined the tantrums didn’t work any more and they became tiresome.

That was external abuse thrown at umpires, fans, opponents and, at times, permanently attached objects. Youzhny’s outburst was self abuse and you could say it worked because he went on to win the match but, I’m disturbed by it. Tennis culture has segued from outwardly directed acts of hostility and frosty relationships between top rivals to an era where everyone is friendly and open hostility or acts of frustration are discouraged.

When I saw Youzhny’s act, I couldn’t help thinking of food disorders where people act out their feelings of inadequacy by punishing themselves in the worst kind of way. Where did we learn that kind of behavior? I’m being overwrought, I know, Youzhny will survive and it was only a flesh wound, but we discourage racket smashing and that’s a mistake. These players are under immense pressure and if you penalize them for expressing frustration externally, maybe this is what you get – self abuse.

Youzhny lost his next match to Janko Tipsarevic and Tipsy is one answer to the question: Which player ranked outside the top twenty will make it to the quarterfinals in Miami (Igor Andreev is the other)? I didn’t see the Tipsarevic – Youzhny match because I’m still trying to get ATP Masters Series TV working properly on either of my two computers. For all of you who scream that ATP Masters Series TV doesn’t give you access to recorded matches – it streams live matches online from the Masters Series events – you can keep screaming: it is recording matches but it’s selling them. If you want to go back and look at the Indian Wells final, you have to pay $3 U.S. I might get into trouble for saying this because we have a partnership with their site, but if I were you, I’d just download Hypercam 2 or WM Recorder or some other stream recording software and record the match straight off your screen. Off course, you’ve got to be there to start up the recording but that could change soon because there is software that acts like a DVR, it’s just that it’s not quite ready for prime time yet. People who try to charge for every single byte of content that comes down the pipe should beware: technology giveth and technology taketh away.

I had high hopes for James Blake in his quarterfinal match against Rafael Nadal because Miami is fast relative to Indian Wells and James has looked good here in Miami. The court looked fast in the first set as each player kept holding serve, often at love. James finally started to catch up to Rafa’s serve with Nadal serving at 3-4. James finally figured out that Nadal had yet to serve to his forehand side in the deuce court and this is one of those things that continues to confuse me.

I’ve never stood across the court from a Rafa serve and I’m pretty sure it would bounce off my nose before I ever got a racket on it because it kicks up at varying heights and it curls in on you and away from you, but I still don’t understand why Nadal can be so good at holding his serve considering that he primarily hits to only three spots on the court – and only one on the deuce side, namely, down the middle. I remember one of his finals against Federer at Roland Garros which showed his serving pattern and there was one dot to Federer’s serve on the deuce side and I believe that was on a second serve.

Clue me in please. Any theory is welcome.

Anyway, Rafa was serving at 3-4 in the first set and James ran around his backhand and unleashed one of those ungodly returns of his. On break point, he came to the net and put the ball away easily to go up 5-3 and serve for the set. James always tries to end points early and today he went into hyperdrive. He won the first set in 38 minutes and there were precious few baseline rallies of any description. The whole thing went so quickly that Nadal couldn’t get into the match physically or mentally.

James had Rafa down but he let him up and that was the beginning of the end. Rafa had been spraying balls and touching his foot as if something was wrong with it and now he was down 15-30 on his serve at 2-2 in the second set. Rafa got James on the run with one of those runaround forehands that take him outside the doubles alley, and followed that up with a trip to the net where he ended the point with a deep volley after drawing James in on a drop shot. And there it was, just as James was about to get a two break points to go ahead in the set, Rafa woke up just as he realized that the match was about to get away from him. He pumped his fist and knee in celebration and now he was fully ready for battle.

Rafa’s awakening got into James’ head. He started missing first serves and, for some reason, he kept approaching to Rafa’s backhand even though Rafa was standing there waiting most of the time and his backhand passing shot is particularly nasty. James held on but Rafa got break points on his next service game and went up a break when James, yet again, approached to Nadal’s backhand. Rafa then served for the set where James gave up 0-30 start to lose the game and the second set and where he again, oh, never mind.

So much for my coaching advice, though, because James’ approached to Nadal’s forehand at the beginning of the third set and he still got passed. I’m trying to remember how Blake beat him the first three times they played because Rafa is turning the tide after beating him in Indian Wells and it’s now time to ask: Is Rafa getting much better on hard courts or is James regressing?

Rafa is much better on hard courts because he’s learned to play more aggressively and keep someone like James from taking over points by attacking first. It took him a set and half to figure it out but once he did, the break points started coming – he ended with 19 of them. James reached the quarterfinals here for the first time so he’s improving, not regressing, but he doesn’t have levels to move between and he doesn’t have the balls out over the top intensity that Rafa brings to every point.

For instance, Rafa had break point on James at 1-1 in the third set. James got to the net and hit an overhead that was so close to Rafa that he barely had to move to hit a dipping return just over the net. James couldn’t get it back. First of all, James hit the overhead at Rafa and second, he tried to hit a cute drop volley to the side of the court where Rafa was camped out. Two missed opportunities on an important point. To add insult to injury, Rafa then broke James again on a netcord. It was over. James failed to win another game and Rafa was into the semifinals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 win.

In five hard court tournaments this year, Rafa has one quarterfinal, one final, and three semifinals (so far). In the Middle East – U.S coastal two-step of Indian Wells and Miami, he has the best combined results. Other players are complaining about heat stroke and such trivialities as mononucleosis but Rafa just keeps chugging along. I hope he doesn’t wear himself out and manages to survive the clay court season with something left over for Wimbledon because Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Roger Federer, and a few other players could make this year’s Wimbledon a barn burner.

Tomorrow Pat Davis is posting something about Ana Ivanovic and I’ll be back on Saturday with semifinals results. Right now I’m off to see the Los Angeles Dodgers play the San Francisco Giants (aka The Hated Ones) because baseball has arrived. See ya.

In case you didn’t know that Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams walk on water, I though I’d show you this.