For a minute there I thought I was watching the Stanley Cup playoffs. Paul Capdeville had just lost the last point of his second round match with Mario Ancic and was arguing with the umpire because he thought Ancic had hit his final shot on the second bounce. Ancic shook Capdeville’s hand then, as Ancic passed him, Capdeville yelled at Ancic and the shoving began. Umpire Roland Herfel jumped down from his chair and pushed on Capdeville’s chest to separate him from Ancic. Bench clearing brawls are common in baseball and players routinely get tossed from football games for fighting but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a physical fight at a tennis match. Nicolas Kiefer threw his racket across the net in his match with Sebastican Grosjean at the Australian Open in January and Hewitt shared some choice words and hand expressisons with Guillermo Coria in last year’s Davis Cup but it seldom escalates into shoving, even the tepid version displayed by Capdeville and Ancic.

Ancic said the two men had settled the matter amicably in the locker room. Unfortunate really, a little bad blood might have brought some much needed attention to tennis. Now that we have fights, couldn’t we have a rivalry between two players who hate each other instead of Federer and Nadal who are good friends?

Marc Gicquel is my nomination for the Frozen Chicken award given to the player who refuses to be easily dismantled. Nicolas Kiefer had Gicquel down two sets to none and let him back into the match. This is why it’s so hard to win a slam: you have to play a 29-year old home town wild card clay court specialist on clay; the partisan crowd is all over you whenever you question a ball mark; after four hours of playing and two rain delays, you’re hitting thirty-seven stroke points with no tiebreaker in sight. That’s all bad enough but then Kiefer stumbled while running towards the net and rolled into the singles stick bloodying his knee.

It was Kiefer’s fault the match went so long. While he was ahead he was content trading endless backhands with Gicquel. He waited until he was behind to go for winners. That’s why it took him six match points before he finally won 11-9 in the fifth set. Gicquel gets my vote because he was bageled in the first set and he drew blood.

There were two surprise losers: Jose Acasuso and Fernando Gonzalez. Acasuso makes sense. He’s only gone past the second round in one slam event – Roland Garros – and even then, he only got to the third round. But Gonzalez has been to the quarterfinals in every slam but the Australian and he’s having a marvelous year. There are a lot of ATP fantasy tennis players who are very, very unhappy with him and I’m one of them.

Richard Gasquet’s confidence has plummeted. He tanked the last set and went down to Nalbandian, 6-2, 3-6, 7-5, 6-0. That will not go over well at all in Paris. I like Gasquet’s game because he’s an aggressive player but what is he thinking? Someone should test his adrenals. I’m serious. I’ve been consulting with a nutritionist for the past few months. She explained that my adrenals are overworked and my blood sugar drops when I exercise. That’s why I lose my temper, froth at the mouth and curse at people when they try to take my tennis court away – I have a fight or flight response at the slightest provocation. Gasquet is not like me, he is a nice young man, but he responds like a fearful animal when his opponent is beating him. He tries to hit the ball as hard as he can and go for truly awful shots while completely out of postion. Come to think of it, maybe Capdeville’s adrenals should be tested too.

Lleyton Hewitt looks like he’s alright. Mathieu Montcourt had set point in the first set when Hewitt tried to decapitate him. Montcourt was at the net and had hit a drop shot when Hewitt came in and hit the ball as hard as he could right at Moncourt – welcome to the bigs, Monsieur Montcourt. The ball flew off Montcourt’s racket and out of the court and the French crowd booed loudly. Just the way Hewitt likes it. Moncourt hit two errors to give back a break and Hewitt got his straight set win. I’ve picked Hewitt over Dominik Hrbaty to get into round four.

Any other player might have taken exception to Hewitt’s attempt at a beheading. Maybe Montcourt didn’t say anything because Hewitt is his favorite player. After the match he said,”Well, he’s a tough player. He’s my favorite.” See what I mean about tennis? Can you imagine a baseball player saying that after a pitcher tried to bean him?

And here is where I need to complain about the medial control from Roland Garros. The website rolandgarros.com has its own video and audio feed. They broadcast short video and audio clips of interviews. Very short. This means that there is no mention of the fight between Ancic and Cadeville or Hewitt’s pyrotechnics, it’s all very sanitized. It’s bad enough that the ITWA (International Tennis Writers Association) prevents transcripts of post match press conferences from being posted for 24 hours so that they can monopolize them – if it was a baseball game I could turn to ESPN or the radio to get the press conference live – but only shortened versions of a few interviews are available even after 24 hours. Roland Garros is hogging the media for its website to the detriment of tennis. If you look at the proliferation of fantasy sports sites and blogs, you see how important the web is to sports mania and tennis could use some mania.

Another terrible tennis father is upon us. Aravane Rezai is a French player whose parents are from Iran. An article in the New York Times yesterday reported that French junior players and their parents have accused Rezai’s father and coach, Arsalan, of intimidating them. I don’t know exactly what he did that was so intimidating. Maybe he yelled out, ” kill the bitch!” as Jim Pierce, Mary’s father, did in the middle of a match. He probably didn’t go as far as drugging his child’s opponents as a recent tennis father in France did but he has some serious issues as you can see in this quote from the article:

…he decided his children would play tennis after watching Yannick Noah win the French Open in 1983 and jump into his father’s arms.

“He hugged his father; he thanked his father who had done something for him,” Arsalan said. “That’s when I got something in my head that I wanted to do something like that for myself.”

Let me get this right. He decided that his children will become tennis champions so that they can jump into his arms and be thankful. Not because it will better their lives, not because they want to play tennis, but so that they can make him look like a good father. I think the DSM term for this is borderline narcissism.

ATP fantasy tennis players, please note that tournament prize money is updated throughout the season. For instance, if you look at the list of prize money, you’ll see that Rome and Hamburg paid $400,000, up from $340,000 last year. If you picked the two finalists, your team would have won $600,000. I wonder if the Toronto and Cincinatti Masters Series events will raise their prize money too.