The US could take some solace in Floyd Landis’ victory in the Tour de France after the treatment of Lance Armstrong. I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s unlikely Armstrong won seven straight Tours without picking up a few extra red blood cells here and there but that doesn’t excuse the actions of the organizers of the Tour.

A 2005 article in the French newspaper L’Equipe announced that a B sample of Armstrong’s urine tested positive for EPO. L’Equipe is owned by the same group that runs the Tour. Never mind that samples are marked anonymously and are tightly controlled by the French national laboratory but both an A and B sample are required for a positive test. As I said in a previous post, the Tour can’t prove that Armstrong tested positive because the A sample has been used up and Armstrong can never prove he was innocent because the A sample has been used up.

If that wasn’t bad enough, at the press conference introducing the 2006 Tour, the organizers showed a highlight film of the 2005 Tour without highlighting the winner – Armstrong. They were happy to be rid of him. Now it was time for a European to win.

Except that Floyd Landis from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was the hero. He hasn’t won seven straight times and he’s unlikely to win with an artificial hip – he’ll have hip replacement surgery after the Tour – but no one could remember a ride that matched his solo tour up the mountain that wiped out a ten minute deficit and put him within thirty seconds of the leader. One time trial later he was up a minute and the victory was his.

The US could use some good news. It’s hard enough to be a citizen in a country under fire for its participation in two wars: Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but now the US is attacking the global sports world too. US Federal agents arrested the principals in the British web site, betonsports.com, and is preventing them from returning to their home country. Even though online gambling is legal in England, the US has decided that they are breaking a US law because they have US customers. The website has had to close down until the legal matter is settled.

Look into this matter more before writing about it more: http://www.bettingmarket.com/doj5001.htm.

I don’t see how the players do it. Federer has a 3pm practice session in Halle tomorrow afternoon and that’s bad enough but how am I suppose to immediately switch into grass mode after two exhausting weeks of tracking long clay court matches? This week there are two tournaments, Halle and Queens, and Queens has a 64 player draw. Luckily there are a few byes. Queens is paying $94,706 to its winner and Halle is paying $112,941.

Andre Agassi has been on the tour for twenty years, Tim Henman for thirteen, and they’ve played a grand total of three times

Since surface is everything in tennis, I suggest you use matchstat.com in addition to the ATP website to help you make picks because they give results by surface. If you do, you’ll see that Ivan Ljubicic has never made it past the second round of a grass court tournament. Strange considering how big his serve is but then, he’s not the best mover in the world. Ditto for Davydenko, he’s gone past the first round exactly once. No matter, we’re saving him for hard court Masters Series events not these piddling $100,000 Wimbldon tuneups.

First let’s look at Halle. Ignore Federer, of course he’ll win but you can’t pick him for such small change.

I have Schuettler over Baghdatis because Schuettler got to the third round here last year and he has a 4-3 head-to-head record over Tommy Haas but Haas won the last three, so it’s Haas to the quarterfinals.

Mikhail Youzhny is 3-0 over Nicolas Kiefer including one match on hardcourts at the 2004 Olympics. Head-to-head over rankings, I say. It’s hard to pick Berdych and Youzhny because Berdych is so annoyingly unpredictable but I have to pick someone so Berdych it is.

As for Queens, let’s hope Nadal doesn’t take that money but there’s not much chance of it. I couldn’t believe people were talking about Nadal’s chances at Wimbledon considering Nadal has only reached the third round at the US Open. First things first please. I’m riding Roddick through every grass tournament he enters because I don’t want to suffer through his angst at hard court tournaments and I saw him hit a couple of 150 mph serves in Davis Cup against Chile.

It’s interesting to note that Jarkko Nieminen and Tomas Berdych have never met in an ATP event though Berdych turned pro four years ago and Nieminen six years ago. That’s how far flung the tennis world is and how hard it is to build allegiance to players or develop rivalries. You’d be surprised how low the head-to-head numbers are in general and this is a good example of it.

In this week’s New Yorker there’s a cartoon with a tortoise in the foreground and another tortoise walking towards it. The little thought bubble above first tortoise’s head says, “Ah, this must be my 2006.” Not my 2 o’clock appointment or my Tuesday appointment but my yearly appointment because that’s how slow the tortoise world goes. But it’s worse in the ATP. In 2002, Berdych might just as well have said to Nieminem, “Ah, you must be my 2006,” because that’s how long it took before they will finally play each other in a match.

Blake vs. Ljubicic is hard to pick because Ljubicic is 5-o over Blake but Ljubicic, as I said, is fairly hopeless on grass. Then again, Blake hasn’t done well on grass the last few years either and he lost both grass matches in the Davis Cup match against Chile. That 5-0 head-to-head is too much to ignore even if it does put Ljubicic in the – gulp – semifinals.

Thomas Johansson is 5-0 against Mirnyi but it’s hard to know if his eye has recovered enough to play on grass. Shouldn’t matter, he’s in Hewitt’s part of the draw and I’m riding Hewitt until I’m convinced he really wants to play this year.

Back to tortoise land. Andre Agassi has been on the tour for twenty years, Tim Henman for thirteen, and they’ve played a grand total of three times, the last time six years ago. Boy, I’d hate to be a handicapper for tennis at a Las Vegas gambling house. Every other sport has enough head-to-head statistics to employ a few hundred statisticians fulltime. I know of a baseball fantasy league player who works with a statistician at the Jet Propulsion Lab. If I hired a statistician, she’d spend all of her time projecting statistics instead of manipulating them because there aren’t many to be had in tennis. It’s hard to pick Agassi and Henman because who knows what condition Agassi is in but neither one is going far this week so I won’t worry about it.

Radek Stepanek was in the semifinals here last year but Dimitri Tursunov got to the fourth round at Wimbledon. I don’t have to tell you that they’ve never played each other. Stepanek is having a better year so I’ll take him. Grosjean is 28-9 on grass, I’m taking him.

My final team: Roddick, Grosjean, Hewitt, Ljubicic, Stepanek, Haas, Tursunov, Berdych. Doubles: Bjorkman and Mirnyi.

Oy, I’m exhausted. Enough already. I’m tired of hearing players say they get a message every day, I think I deserve that too.

Please post your choices and feel free to tell me if you think I’m full of it.

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.

Diego Hartfield was playing his first regular ATP tennis match at age twenty-five. Unfortunately his opponent was Roger Federer and the tournament was the French Open. You could tell that Hartfield wasn’t used to the big stage, he wore dark underwear under his white shorts. Otherwise he acquitted himself well. After losing the first set by a respectable 5-7 score, he had Federer down 15-30 at 5-5 in the second set. Federer came to the net and Hartfield had a great opportunity to pass him down the line and get a break point but he put the ball into the net. Since Hartfield is already twenty-five he’s not likely to set the tour on fire but it could happen and, if it does, he’ll learn that good players don’t miss opportunities like that. Federer won the match 7-5, 7-6(2), 6-2.

Picking winners at a grand slam is a bit easier than other tour events. Things tend to go a bit more to form because the stakes are so high that the top players rise to the occasion and the lesser players succumb to the pressure. That’s by way of deflecting credit for picking the winner in 60% of the first round matches instead of my usual 50%.

Mauresmo looked spunky. Megan Shaughnessy had just broken her to get back to 4-4 in the second set after Mauresmo had won the first set. Mauresmo broke back immediately and even did a little scissors-kick jump-hop complete with fist pump to celebrate an overhead in the game. She then served out the set for a 6-4, 6-4 victory. Big sigh of relief for the French contingent.

It’s interesting to see how players insulate themselves on the tour. I’ve decried the players’ tendency to shut out the fans and play to their players’ box. Mauresmo directed her celebratory dance towards her coach, Loïc Courteau. Sharapova is one of the worst. When she starts missing balls she slumps and looks at her father in the stands. [blockquote]Sometimes I feel like I’m in the Sharapova living room watching, silently, while the two of them play out an elaborate father/daughter family ritual replete with cheering, complaining, whining and, sometimes, resolution.

I would really prefer to be included but I do understand. Read the first post of Rafael Nadal’s French Open blog. If you’re rich and famous it means dining with kings and jetting to Barcelona for the evening. I know life is tough when the hardest decision you have to make is whether to walk your sister or your mother down the red carpet of a huge media event, the celebrity sports world is a very insular, make believe affair, but Nadal also has to deal with fans turning up at his house. On Center Court, Chris Meyers’ interview show on The Tennis Channel, Nadal said that fans come to his house looking for him. On one occasion, his uncle/coach Toni, who lives in the building, simply went upstairs and brought Nadal down so the fans could have a photo taken with Nadal. That’s perfectly fine until a crazy person turns up. But what happens when an idiot with a gun or a knife wants to make a name for himself?

I once lived next door to a house that Mick Jagger owned in Manhattan. He could not walk the twenty feet from his car to his front door unless a security guard was glued to his side.

Players insulate themselves for emotional reasons too. Once a player has a meltdown or misbehaves in a tournament, footage of that behavior will become a permanent part of that player’s broadcast profile. As Hingis warmed up for her match today with Lisa Raymond, there it was again, footage of her complete meltdown against Steffi Graf in the 1999 French Open final. She was so distraught at having failed to win after serving for the match that she left the court and had to be dragged back for the awards ceremony by her mother. And, of course, as soon as Henin-Hardenne appeared, footage of her Aussie Open breakdown accompanied her.

Nadal is very open and friendly in his blog. He describes his life in detail that most players don’t share. I hope he keeps this openness and friendly attitude. I hope he doesn’t turn into a

Kevin Kim won his first round match. What is the farthest he’s even gone here or at any slam? Oh, never mind. He meets Nadal in the next round.

I caught a glimpse of Hingis’s winning percentage on ESPN. It’s 6th alltime at .819. What sticks out, though, is Chris Evert. She’s the only one with a percentage over 90%. That is unbelievable.

By the way, if you think Maria Sharapova is the only one who ever sold sex for the WTA, check out this image of Mary stretched across a bench wearing a gown that barely holds her in place. She’s wearing stiletto heels and exposing plenty of thigh. Even with the clay court and the net in the background, this would be too racy for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. S.I. models are pretty wholesome. In this pose, Mary looks like she’s posing for a dominatrix magazine. Yes, ma’am, whatever you say. Here’s the Sports Illustrated pose.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition that Capriate is the one who appears to look like the wholesome, All-American girl and Pierce can successfully pose as the vixen. Yet it’s Capriati who has tasted the dark side.
(add a poll, go here: http://tennis.mostvaluablenetwork.com/wp-admin/edit.php?page=democracy)

OVERALL STRATEGY

Since you can only use a player five times in the ATP fantasy league, it’s critical to map out your strategy at the beginning of the season. If you look at this list of tournaments ordered by prize money, you see that the slams and the Masters Series events are the clear focus of anyone’s strategy. The slams all pay over a million dollars in prize money and Masters Series events pay from $340,000 – $400,000. The next highest prize money $140,000 for Moscow and St. Petersburg. Wow, it’s not just those new money Russians paying $95 million for a Picasso, they pay tennis players pretty well too.

“Rafa’s on a great streak, but it’s got to end some time.”

Let’s start at the beginning. Who are you going to pick for the French Open, the Wimbledon and the US Open? Barring injury, of course, it’s silly not to pick Federer for Wimbledon. If there’s a sure win on the list, that’s it. Nadal at the French Open would be second. And even though it means that Federer has to win three of the four slams, he’s the obvious choice for the US Open.

The next obvious strategy is to pick any Masters Series tournament that either Nadal or Federer, but not both, will play.

Nadal won Monte Carlo and Rome last year and is likely to do so this year. He’ll probably take Hamburg off again to rest – for the hundredth time, tell me why Rome and Hamburg are back to back and only a week before the French Open? Nadal is not as strong on hard courts but he did win the only Masters Series event in his home country – Madrid, with its $378,000 prize – and is a good bet to win it again. That’s four events, what’s the fifth one? A lot of people chose Barcelona, Nadal is a proud guy, he wants to win in Spain, but it’s only $130,200 whereas second place in any Master Series event will get you at least $170,000. Nadal won the Toronto Masters last year and it’s worth $400,000. He can probably win Toronto or Cincinatti so pick whichever one he plays and you have your five tournaments.

As for Federer, we already gave him two tournaments, Wimbledon and the US Open. He was 15-2 last year on clay and did play Hamburg where he is not likely to lose to Gasquet again. You can probably pencil him in for either Toronto or Cincinatti, whichever one Nadal skips. Federer didn’t play Madrid last year because he was injured and even if he does play, I’d choose Nadal at home.

Only a handful of the top players go to the Paris Masters event since it’s so close to to the end of year tournament in Shanghai. Only the top eight players are invited to Shanghai and if you’re already in the top eight, why risk injury? Look at Andy Roddick, he injured himself in Paris and never got to Shanghai. Here is a problem with the ATP fantasy league season. By the time we started, we’d already missed two Masters Series events, Indian Wells and Miami, and Federer won both of those this year and last, so we are left with seven, and, you could say, six since so few play Paris.

Federer could play Paris, he did play in 2003, but that’s the last tournament of the year so you’d be leaving your decision till Madrid.

Later this week I’ll look at possible strategies for second tier players and the rest of the pack.

Any comments about alternative strategies anyone? Anything short of poker ads and porn links are welcome additions to the discussion.

ROME PICKS

Top half of the draw

The winner gets a picture of me dressed as Barbarella the Crossing Guard

I was surprised to learn that Jarkko Nieminen was 22-8 on clay last year. He played well in Munich last week but it probably doesn’t matter because he’d meet Federer in the third round. Massu vs. Davydenko is tricky because Massu got to the final in Casablanca and Davydenko got to the final last week in Estoril. I’m feeling a bit better about Davydenko at the moment so I’ll give it to him. He’ll lose to Federer too but it’s a quarterfinal appearance.

Ferrero is looking more consistent on clay than Mathieu but either one will go down to Nalbandian. Kiefer has a losing record on clay and Bracciali is hot but it’ll still be Nalbandian through to the quarters.

Blake is just beginning on clay but Serra and Blake had similar clay records last year and Serra is 2-5 on the year so I’ll give Blake a push. Ancic is pretty hopeless on clay and Horna had been playing on clay all year but I think Coria can hold it together to get to the quarters and lose to Nalbandian.

Bottom half of the draw

Let’s have the first of the clay court season “what round will Andy Roddick lose in?” competitions. Either Baghdatis or Olivier Rochus can beat him so I say the second round. The winner gets a picture of me dressed as Barbarella the Crossing Guard. If I win, everyone who entered has to send me a picture of themselves in drag. If you pick the same round as me, I win. It’s my column, I make the rules.

Baghdatis has a career 5-10 record on clay and Rochus is 6-1 on clay this year. Matchstats.com, by the way, is an excellent resource for player statistics including records on different surfaces and head-to-head comparisons. Be careful, though, they include challengers in their totals for different surfaces. Tomas Berdych looks good on clay until you see that all of his wins are in challengers.

Haas should rebound unless an injury is bothering him. He’s beaten Ljubicic in both Masters Series events they’ve played and has a better record on clay. Robredo has beaten Haas both times they’ve met on clay and should get to the semis. Use Robredo on your team in the clay court season, his two titles are on clay.

Gaudio beat Berdych in their only clay court match and is 4-0 against Gonzalez including two matches on clay. Alessio Di Mauro is a curious guy. Every tournament he’s played in his two year career has been on clay except for one appearance at Wimbledon. I’m tempted to put him over Henman but Henman got to the third round at Rome and Hamburg last year. No matter, he’s in Nadal’s quarter of the draw.

Poor Carlos Moya has to face Rafael Nadal in the first round. After his loss in the semifinals at Estoril, he said, “Rafa’s on a great streak, but it’s got to end some time.” True, but not in the first round and not likely in Rome either.