This week the men’s tour has landed in Washington, D.C., for the Legg Mason Classic. Today’s quarterfinal match featured Andy Roddick against that humongous pituitary case, Ivo Karlovic of Croatia. All 6’10” worth. Size 18 shoes. Yes, I’m eating my heart out over that one. The announcers in the booth did a slowmo analysis of Ivo’s serve. It’s a wonderfully smooth, powerful serve, and by the time he makes contact with the ball, we’re talking about ten feet off the ground. For the other guys on the tour, it must appear that Karlovic is serving from the treetops. Or so Brad Gilbert described it.

That serve nearly carried the day for Karlovic. It had to, the temperature on court was around 100 degrees, with the usual heavy humidity of Washington at this time of year. Karlovic was not raised in a hot climate like Andy Roddick, and he suffered for that. He was counting on his serve, and it nearly pulled him through. The guy looked like he was about to croak though, like the woman in the stands who was stretched out on the benches, being fanned after she passed out.

Both guys came out ready to serve at least, if not to play. There were hardly any rallies today. It was just too exhausting to maintain them in this heat. They wanted to end the points as fast as possible. If you took a bathroom break, yawned, or maybe even blinked, you would have missed a lot. It was that kind of match.

Both guys held serve into the first set tiebreak. Karlovic was serving at 80% through the first set, Roddick was at 69%. They traded breaks, then Karlovic caught a lucky moment when Andy let down just a fraction. He double-faulted, giving the first set to the Croat. That should have inspired big Ivo, but instead he kind of melted down in several changes of shirts. Andy hung on, and his superior conditioning eventually carried him to the victory. Lately Andy Roddick has played (and lost) a number of matches that turned on a few dimes here and there. He’s had to keep his cool and mentally try and fight back from those little lapses in his attention. Today was such a day, and he managed to do that, winning in three sets, 6-7(7), 7-5, 6-4.

The American boys are performing well here this week. Roddick, along with James Blake and Bobby Reynolds, have made it into the quarterfinals. Who would of thunk it.

The match today was also of interest because of some of the commentary, particularly when former pro Donald Dell dropped by the booth. Brad Gilbert and Cliff Drysdale asked him, if you could change something about tennis today to make it better…..

And Dell replied that players pulling out of tournaments just before they start is killing the game. This week in Los Angeles a host of women players did just that, as have the men at the Washington event. Something probably has to give here, on the one hand the players complain that the season is too long. On the other hand, the tournament directors complain when players don’t show up. Both sides probably need to devise a middle ground here. Between Greed And Exhaustion, I guess we can call this movie.

Brad Gilbert’s peeve about the game was that the plans to start electronic line calls are now delayed for the U.S. Open and some of the tournaments leading up to it. Apparently the Powers That Be don’t feel the system has been quite perfected enough.

Hhmm. Most unfortunate. Guess we have another wretched summer to look forward to of imperfect human beings calling those lines.