The BNP Paribas Masters event takes place at the Palais Omnisport de Paris-Bercy (POPB) in Paris, France. The POPB looks like a green building – a building that uses the surrounding environment to preserve and generate energy by using, for example, grass on a roof or solar energy for heat. The building has slanted walls covered by lawns and erector set glass pyramids. To see a panoramic view and walk around the neighborhood, click here

If the tournament had laid down some of that lawn on the indoor court, Andy Roddick might have pulled off an improbable win in today’s semifinal. Though he’s won five tournaments and is currently ranked a solid number three, Roddick is running in place. Federer beat him in the Wimbledon final, Lleyton Hewitt psyched him out at the Australian Open, Gilles Muller dismissed him in the first round at the US Open and he hasn’t won a Master Series event this year.

Federer received a “Men of the Year” award from GQ magazine in Munich this week. He beat out a field in the International Man category that included Pope Benedict XVI. I am not a fan of the Pope, he is far too conservative for me, but what does that say about our priorities?

Ljubicic beat Roddick in the deciding match of the first round Davis Cup match between the US and Croatia in March. Roddick was extremely upset about the loss, he’d love to beat Ljubicic today, but he strained his back in his quarterfinal match with David Ferrer and that could be a problem. Ljubicic has played a lot of tennis lately. He appeared in the final in three of the of the last four tournaments and won two of them. He has already secured a spot in the Masters Cup in Shanghai. He could take a huge sigh of relief and lose his focus.

Ljubicic will be joined in Shanghai by Federer, Nadal, Roddick, Hewitt, Andre Agassi, Guillermo Coria, and Nikolay Davydenko. The tournament will be played on Gerfloor, a fast indoor surface, much to the chagrin of Nadal. He can play on a hard court surface but grass and fast indoor courts make him beatable. Why did Shanghai do that? It doesn’t make sense. Why not choose a surface that benefits a wider range of player styles?

It’s funny to see Roddick in Lacoste clothing. Lacoste has a staid corporate reputation in comparison to Reebok’s rebellious image. One of Reebok’s clients is Allen Iverson and they just signed Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees. Maybe Roddick is too mainstream. He might want to fire a ball at a referee’s head or test positive for steroids if he wants to get signed by Reebok again.

Maybe Roddick is too mainstream. He might want to fire a ball at a referee’s head or test positive for steroids if he wants to get signed by Reebok again.

I sat behind Ljubicic in his Davis Cup match against Andre Agassi. From that vantage point I could see Ljubicic’s second serve bounce high and curve sharply to the left. It causes Roddick to hit an error on the first point of today’s match.

This is a battle between two very hard servers on a fast synthetic surface. You can hear their feet on the boards as the players run around. Roddick attacks the net relentlessly but he puts one approach shot long and an easy volley into the net to give Ljubicic two break points. Roddick grimaces as he walks back to the baseline after saving the first break point. He loses the second to go down 0-2. Roddick is attacking the net because he can’t move well enough to play the baseline effectively. Ljubicic takes advantage of this by hitting drop shots, one from the baseline and one at the net, to go up 3-0.

In the sixth game, Roddick reaches for a wide forehand and cuts the stroke off because his back hurts too much. Later in the game, he leans sideways in discomfort after a missed return. Players have been backing out of tournament commitments with regularity this year, Lindsay Davenport and Maria Sharapova left Philadelphia without it’s top two seeds this week, but here is a case where Roddick should default before he hurts himself further and affects his chances in Shanghai. There will be another match for the spectators to watch today and he’s already given them an exciting match. He fought off two match points to beat Ferrer in three sets. He has fulfilled his responsibility to this tournament.

Ljubicic takes the set 6-3. During the set break, a trainer stretches Roddick’s back. After he wins his second service game to get to 2-1, he gets more work from the trainer. Roddick is too gracious. Mary Pierce might take every injury timeout she can find, but Roddick doesn’t take an injury timeout for either treatment. Instead, he uses the two minute break between sets and the ninety second break between games. What’s his hurry?

By this time, Roddick’s strategy is obvious. He puts all of his energy into winning his serve as fast as possible and bides his time on Ljubicic’s serve hoping to save his energy for a tiebreaker. Roddick might as well stay in his seat while Ljubicic serves. Ljubicic gets three aces including a second serve ace to get to 5-5. It doesn’t look that much different when Roddick serves. By the time this match is finished, Ljubicic will have won 90% of his first serve points and Roddick a very respectable 78%.

The match could end sooner if Ljubicic was patiently constructing points instead of making errors by trying to hit the ball out of Roddick’s reach at every opportunity. At 5-5, Ljubicic blocks a very hard Roddick serve down the line for a winner and passes Roddick to finally get a break. There will be no long rallies in this match. Ljubicic serves out and wins the match, 6-3, 7-5.

… it looks like Roddick and Agassi put themselves in harm’s way to compensate for less conscientious players who drop out of tournaments at the last minute, leaving tournament directors without top seeded players.

Roddick is a very conscientious guy, sometimes to a fault. He takes responsibility for making tennis more popular in the US by making a lot of appearances which take time away from his training. Today he felt a responsibility to play out the match even though he was obviously in pain. Andre Agassi did the same thing at the French Open. He limped through a loss to Jarkko Nieminen though he could hardly move due to sciatica.

I appreciate their sense of responsibility, but it looks like Roddick and Agassi put themselves in harm’s way to compensate for less conscientious players who drop out of tournaments at the last minute, leaving tournament directors without top seeded players. They can’t carry the game by themselves.

After the match, a woman in short shorts with a bazooka-like gun slung over her shoulder shoots t-shirts into the stands. She runs around the court accompanied by swirling lights and pounding rock music as the kids in the crowd squeal with delight. That might have been more entertaining, and just as strange, as the tennis match they just watched.