Roger Federer and Pete Sampras put on a show in Madison Square Garden on Monday night. What did it mean?

Everybody is hunting down Roger Federer these days. David Nalbandian beat him back to back in Madrid and Paris last fall. Novak Djokovic took him out in the semifinals at the Australian Open. Andy Murray dropped him in the first round at Dubai last week.

If that’s not bad enough, the past is hunting him down too. Just as Federer gets close to Pete Sampras’ record of 14 slams, Sampras wants to remind everyone that he used to be the greatest player of all time. He knows how it is. We have short memories. The player we see today is the best ever because we forget the player of yesterday. Pete wants us to remember

You know what, that’s bull.

Sampras has exhibitions with Marcelo Rios and David Nalbandian next month. What does he have to prove to them? Nothing. No, something else was going on.

The Garden was crammed and all the big people were there: Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, Stan Smith, Ivan Lendl, Roy Emerson, Billie Jean King (in a nice suit for once, God love her), Tiger Woods, the Davis Cup – yes, the Cup was the guest of honor. The courtside reporter was Justin Gimelstob and therein lies the story.

ESPN will not be broadcasting Indian Wells or Miami. Both tournaments will be broadcast on Fox Sports Net. This is how far tennis has fallen in the U.S. Instead of listening to Patrick McEnroe, Cliff Drysdale, and Mary Jo Fernandez in the broadcast booth, we’ll be listening to rookie Gimelstob and Chandra Rubin.

There is evidence of a resurgence of tennis in the U.S. – more people are playing the game – but the measure of popularity is always in the advertising numbers and clearly tennis’ numbers are not keeping up with the rest of the U.S. sports world.

ESPN can talk about wanting to focus on March Madness instead of Miami and the inconvenience of the Davis Cup schedule – Davis Cup has already migrated from ESPN to Versus – but that’s pure politeness. If tennis brought in enough advertising income, Indian Wells and Miami would still be on ESPN. At the very least, ESPN would be sharing the broadcast schedule with the Tennis Channel. By the way, the ATP year end championships have moved to Fox Sports Net too.

In my opinion, the match at the Garden was an opportunity to remind us how big tennis used to be in the U.S. It was like a prize fight. Everyone turned up for the spectacle. Everyone wanted to be seen there.

Like many prizefights, the match itself wasn’t necessarily that entertaining. The organizers set the Sampras – Federer exos up with a handicap for Federer. He didn’t have his right hand tied behind his back but the matches were played on faster surfaces than he sees on tour and that meant Sampras’ could stick to serve and volley and be competitive.

I’m not sure why people like John McEnroe say that Sampras could do some damage at Wimbledon. The grass courts at Wimbledon have slowed down since Sampras retired and the ball they now use is bigger and fuzzier. The Garden court on Monday night was so fast that four games passed before there was a substantial groundstroke rally. Sampras couldn’t get away with that at Wimbledon.

Sampras was a nervous wreck in the first set and couldn’t keep anything in the court. Federer fooled around in the second set. He gave Sampras a point on an out ball that the ballperson missed and he kept hitting slices for passing shots. It did get interesting in the third set though.

Federer went from a break up to a break down. He went through a sloppy patch but managed to gather himself to the tiebreaker. Just so you know how fast the court was, Federer hit four straight aces at one point in the third set. How often does he do that in the real ATP world?

Federer won the third set tiebreaker 8-6 to win the match, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (6), but we’re no closer to knowing whether Federer is slipping or not, we won’t know that until he faces Murray or Nalbandian at Indian Wells. And we already know that Federer will surpass Sampras even if he stops at 14 slams because he has two French Open finals and Sampras has none.

No, this match was a celebration of U.S. tennis history and its possible future. More tennis events are planned for the Garden. For now, though, as Federer said, “The winner was tennis. The winner was tennis in America.” I hope so.

U.S. players won all three ATP and WTA events last week. Can you believe it?

Whoa, what a week it’s been for U.S. tennis and it ain’t over yet. Pete Sampras and Roger Federer will meet tonight in the mecca of U.S. sports arenas, Madison Square Garden. MSG, by the way, was the site of the ATP and WTA year end championships for many years. Sampras is, of course, retired, and while I’m not exactly sure what he’s doing popping up all over the place in the past few years after a few years of hibernation, I am definitely not one of those people who think Sampras is planning a return to the ATP tour.

That would be sad indeed. Is U.S. tennis in such bad shape? Luckily it’s not. For the past few weeks the poll on our site has asked the following question: Which player will win his first ATP tournament this year? Jo-Wilfried Tsonga got the most votes with 22. Sam Querrey tied for last place with two votes.

Turns out we were all wrong. Querrey is the winner after he took the title in Las Vegas on Sunday. He overcame an early bout of grumpiness to beat South African Kevin Anderson in the Las Vegas final, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.

If you were wandering around Las Vegas you might have thought it was a basketball tournament not a tennis tournament. Querrey is 6ft6in (198cm), Anderson is 6ft7in (200cm), and John Isner, who went out in the second round, is 6ft9in (205cm). We knew tall tennis was coming when we first saw those 7ft (213cm) three point shooters in the NBA – those huge hulking guys who are allergic to hard contact and prefer to set up far beyond the key instead of under the basket where they might get pushed around. Still, I’m not happy about it. I’d rather watch the smaller, scrappier David Ferrer run all those tall boys silly.

Las Vegas had a women’s challenger running alongside the ATP event and there I saw the future of U.S. women’s tennis. Asia Muhammad got all the way to the final before losing easily to veteran Camille Pin. Muhammad looks like a young Venus Williams. She’s long and gangly and she has a good serve, strong ground strokes, and a killer overhead. She’s got a funky hitch in her serve – she drops her racket before completing her backswing – but there’s lots to work with and she’s in a challenger final at age 16. One thing she has that Venus doesn’t have is a willing net game. She actually works at getting to the net. Hooray.

Muhammad gets financial assistance from Andre Agassi’s foundation and she regularly hits with Steffi Graf and Darren Cahill. You never know who’ll turn into a champion but she won’t fail for lack of support.

Speaking of Venus, I’m really sorry I couldn’t find footage of the match between Venus and her sister Serena in the Bangalore semifinals last week. Did anyone watch it? If so, please report in and we’ll post it. This was the first match they’ve played that went to a third set tiebreaker and it was their first meeting since 2005. Serena won the match, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(4), and went on to beat Patty Schnyder in the final in straight sets despite a bout of cursing and racket smashing. I like that because Serena is very tough to beat when she’s mad.

Why did Venus and Serena travel to the other side of the world to play in a small tournament the week before Indian Wells? Serena needed matches because she hasn’t played since the Australian Open. And both of them needed a tuneup for Miami because they’ve refused to play Indian Wells since 2001. Venus pulled out of a semifinal match against Serena that year and the crowd booed Serena mercilessly as she beat Kim Clijsters in the final.

Indian Wells will be a required tournament for WTA players next year so the sisters will have to work out an agreement with the WTA since they flatly refuse to ever play Indian Wells again, and they certainly don’t want to pay a sizable fine for skipping a required event. I won’t see the sisters in Indian Wells next year but I will see Justine Henin. She skipped last year and isn’t bothering to turn up this year either.

Dubai was the biggest event of the week – eight out of the top ten ATP players turned up – and a U.S. player won that event too. Andy Roddick surprisingly plowed through Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic before finishing off Feliciano Lopez in the final in his first trip to Dubai. Roddick looks like he’s at the top of his game and his timing couldn’t be better now that Federer is showing some vulnerability.

Three titles, one challenger final and a legend. Things are looking up.

Andy Roddick is flying high this week with a title in Dubai. Let’s see why.

Our reader Gabs has been trashing us forever because we gush over Roger Federer and give home-grown Andy Roddick a hard time. We’re trying to change our ways Gabs, honest we are, but you know, Andy hasn’t give us a whole lot to crow about except for Davis Cup and I, for one, sat there in tears as the boys ran around the arena in Portland celebrating a Davis Cup title.

Now we have something to crow about.

I told you Andy Roddick could beat Rafael Nadal if he played a bit better from the baseline and served a few more aces. Well, it worked. I would have said no such thing about his next opponent – Novak Djokovic – but Andy is on a roll and he rolled all the way into the Dubai final against Feliciano Lopez and the two of them played an inspiring match.

The crowd was crazy the whole evening. The entire female population – and some of the men, hopefully – screamed when Andy changed his shirt late in the second set. Lopez played an inspired tiebreaker to win the first set 8-6 but Andy has his own mojo working this week and he was undeterred. He took the second set 6-4 then broke Lopez to start the third set.

Andy outsteadied Lopez from the baseline and ripped off passing shots like nobody’s business. One of those passing shots gave him his second break in the third set after which the crowd broke out again, this time with chants of “RODDICK RODDICK RODDICK…” Andy had won his second title of the year by the score of 6-7(8), 6-4, 6-2.

To what do we attribute Andy’s resurgence at a tournament usually dominated by the top two or three players? Two things: the coaching bump and temblor theory.

Andy announced this week that he’d split with his coach, Jimmy Connors. Players often get a bump in their performance after separating from a coach. If they fired the coach they want to prove to themselves that they made the right decision. If the coach resigned, they want to show the coach that he gave up too soon.

In this case, it appeared to be a mutual decision. Connors didn’t want to travel as much and Andy couldn’t talk to him about a match that Connors hadn’t seen on TV. What’s the matter Jimmy, you don’t have streaming video :0). I think Connors did give up too soon and that brings up temblor theory.

A temblor is an aftershock to an earthquake. After the big earthquake, the earth rumbles up smaller earthquakes for days after to complete the process of releasing the pressure built up by shifting tectonic plates. It’s not a tremor or a rumble but a combination of the two – a temblor.

Andy Murray’s victory over Roger Federer was an earthquake and Roddick’s and Lopez’ victories are temblors – the sounds of upset and reorganization that come after confirmation of a deep reorganization in the structure, in this case, Roger Federer’s current vulnerability.

Novak Djokovic’s victory over Federer in the Australian Open in January wasn’t the earthquake because Federer had food poisoning preceding the tournament and couldn’t prepare properly, but he was totally prepared for Dubai, now his home tournament, and he still went out in the first round and now every player has some of that little voice in his head that says, “I can do it, I can beat Federer.” Especially Roddick, one of Federer’s most hapless victims. (Sorry Gabs but it’s true.)

There is one problem with my theory. Federer is in New York for his Monday night grand exhibition with Pete Sampras at Madison Square Garden and he started the proceedings off by announcing that he has had mononucleosis for the past few months. Thanks to Pat (Digger) Davis for passing this info on, by the way. She’s becoming a real news aggregator.

This is a little puzzling to me because mononucleosis usually knocks you out for a solid period of time and though Federer says he first saw signs of it in December, he did get to the semifinals in Australia and he did import U.S. junior Michael McClune to Dubai for an intense ten day training session in February which was amply documented by McClune’s coach, Nick Fustar.

Now I’m wondering about that training diary… Maybe I’ve been reading about fictional memoirs too much in the past week. A white woman named Margaret Seltzer passed herself off as a foster child raised in a mixed race family in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles when, in fact, she was raised on the other side of town in the San Fernando Valley by her birth family and attended a private Episcopalian high school.

I’m kidding about doubting the veracity of Fustar’s diary but I will say this. Mononucleosis is caused by the Epstein-Barre virus. Most of us have viruses floating around in our body – despite what most personal ads say, but those viruses don’t bother us until our immune system gets suppressed. Physical and emotional stress suppresses our immune system and though Federer has certainly played a lot of tennis in the past four years that he’s been ranked number one, he’s played fewer matches than any other top player, so I’m guessing the emotional pressure of being top dog is getting to him.

The cracks are beginning to show and players are ready to rush in and take full advantage of his situation. And that’s why it’s too bad Jimmy Connors didn’t stick around. Roddick may have taken Federer’s best shot but he’s still standing and playing better than ever. And that’s a high, high complement.

Gabs, do you have something to add?

Andy Roddick is flying high this week with a title in Dubai. Let’s see why.

Our reader Gabs has been trashing us forever because we gush over Roger Federer and give home-grown Andy Roddick a hard time. We’re trying to change our ways Gabs, honest we are, but you know, Andy hasn’t give us a whole lot to crow about except for Davis Cup and I, for one, sat there in tears as the boys ran around the arena in Portland celebrating a Davis Cup title.

Now we have something to crow about.

I told you Andy could beat Rafael Nadal if he played a bit better from the baseline and served a few more aces. Well, it worked. I would have said no such thing about his next opponent – Novak Djokovic – but Andy is on a roll and he rolled all the way into the Dubai final against Feliciano Lopez, and the two of them played an inspiring match.

The crowd was crazy the whole evening. The entire female population – and some of the men, hopefully – screamed when Andy changed his shirt late in the second set. Lopez played an inspired tiebreaker to win the first set 8-6 but Andy has his own mojo working this week and he was undeterred. He took the second set 6-4 then broke Lopez to start the third set.

Andy outsteadied Lopez from the baseline and ripped off passing shots like nobody’s business. One of those passing shots gave him his second break in the third set after which the crowd broke out again, this time with chants of “RODDICK RODDICK RODDICK…” Andy won his second title of the year by the score of 6-7(8), 6-4, 6-2.

To what do we attribute Andy’s resurgence at a tournament usually dominated by the top two or three players? Two things: the coaching bump and temblor theory.

Andy announced this week that he’d split with his coach, Jimmy Connors. Players often get a bump in their performance after separating from a coach. If they fired the coach they want to prove to themselves that they made the right decision. If the coach resigned, they want to show the coach that he gave up too soon.

In this case, it appeared to be a mutual decision. Connors didn’t want to travel as much and Andy couldn’t talk to him about a match that Connors hadn’t seen on TV. What’s the matter Jimmy, you don’t have streaming video :0). I think Connors did give up too soon and that brings up temblor theory.

A temblor is an aftershock to an earthquake. After the big earthquake, the earth rumbles up smaller earthquakes for days after to complete the process of releasing the pressure built up by shifting tectonic plates. It’s not a tremor or a rumble but a combination of the two – a temblor.

Andy Murray’s victory over Roger Federer was an earthquake and the victories by Roddick and Lopez are temblors – the sounds of upset and reorganization that come after confirmation of a deep reorganization in the structure, in this case, Federer’s newfound vulnerability.

Novak Djokovic’s victory over Federer in the Australian Open in January wasn’t the earthquake because Federer had food poisoning preceding the tournament and couldn’t prepare properly, but he was totally prepared for Dubai, now his home tournament, and he still went out in the first round and now every player has some of that little voice in his head that says, “I can do it, I can beat Federer.” Especially Roddick, one of Federer’s most hapless victims. (Sorry Gabs but it’s true.)

There is one problem with my theory. Federer is in New York for his Monday night grand exhibition with Pete Sampras at Madison Square Garden and he started the proceedings off by announcing that he has had mononucleosis for the past few months. Thanks to Pat (Digger) Davis for passing this info on, by the way, she’s becoming a real news aggregator.

This is a little puzzling to me because mononucleosis usually knocks you out for a solid period of time and though Federer says he first saw signs of it in December, he did get to the semifinals in Australia and he did import U.S. junior Michael McClune to Dubai for an intense ten day training session in February which was amply documented by McClune’s coach, Nick Fustar, here.

Now I’m wondering about that training diary… Maybe I’ve been reading about fictional memoirs too much in the past week. A white woman named Margaret Seltzer passed herself off as a foster child raised in a mixed race family in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles when, in fact, she was raised on the other side of town in the San Fernando Valley by her birth family and attended a private Episcopalian high school.

I’m kidding about doubting the veracity of Fustar’s diary but I will say this. Mononucleosis is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. Most of us have viruses floating around in our body – despite what most personal ads say, but those viruses don’t bother us until our immune system gets suppressed. Physical and emotional stress suppresses our immune system and though Federer has certainly played a lot of tennis in the past four years that he’s been ranked number one, he’s played fewer matches than any other top player, so I’m guessing the emotional pressure of being top dog is getting to him.

The cracks are beginning to show and players are rushing in and taking full advantage of his situation. And that’s why it’s too bad Jimmy Connors didn’t stick around. Roddick may have taken Federer’s best shot but he’s still standing and playing better than ever. And that’s a high, high complement.

Gabs, do you have something to add?

A few more thoughts about Roger Federer’s first round loss to Andy Murray at Dubai and a look at Andy Roddick’s first trip to the very same locale.

I just bought a laptop so I could watch streaming video of tennis matches around the world. After all, it won’t be long before our laptops are our televisions. Already I can buy a gold-brick sized Slingbox to wirelessly funnel my television feed to my laptop whether I’m sitting at home in my pajamas (or less) or sitting on the veranda at the Four Seasons Hotel in Istanbul (anyone been there by the way? If so, please report in.)

After I flipped open the laptop, the first thing I tuned in were camel races in Dubai. Wow, those riders look tiny perched on the back of those camels, you can barely see them. I had a small fright as I wondered whether I was watching the child camel jockeys that were used for centuries before countries recently began to outlaw the practice.

No, it was weirder than that: the camels were controlled by robotic jockeys. Can you believe it? Wow, after centuries of using child slave labor, camel racers have skipped straight to robots in a matter of a few years thereby totally avoiding the tiresome need to pay for human labor. I’ve seldom seen such a huge cultural leap due to technology in such a short time.

The robots were developed by a Swiss company called K-Team. No word on whether they took part in the development of Roger Federer’s Wilson [K]-rackets and, please, no jokes about Fed’s robotic on court personality, o.k.?

Besides, we’ve recently established that Fed is unraveling a bit and I’d like to say a bit more about his loss to Andy Murray in the first round at Dubai earlier this week. My co-writer Pat Davis has become a real digger – a term originally applied to DJs who dig around in old record stores looking for quirky music samples. Pat uncovered this training blog of Fed’s activities.

Fed imported young U.S. player Michael McClune to hit with him in Dubai for ten days in February. McClune’s coach, Nick Fustar, chronicled the training sessions and the record shows that Federer is in fine fettle. He worked his way through intense two and half hour hitting sessions without appreciably raising his heart rate according to Fustar.

If Fed’s not suffering from physical problems, the mental wear of being ranked number one for four consecutive years may be getting to him. In the past, Fed could lift his game to another level when he needed it and now he can’t. He’s riding a one speed balloon tire bicycle instead of the ten speed he used to sport.

Does Fed need a coach? From the heartbroken way he described his breakup with previous coach Tony Roche, the company of a new sidekick might lift him mentally. It looks like he might need a boost to get him through the next phase of his career. At the rate he’s going this year, we could see him grinding out his last few slams which should make him think twice the next time he dismisses someone like Murray by calling him a grinder.

It’s too bad Mats Wilander questioned Fed’s manhood after Fed’s loss to Rafael Nadal in the 2006 French Open final because Wilander looks like he’s positioning himself to be the next uber-coach. Wilander was sitting in the stands during the match between Paul-Henri Mathieu and Andy Roddick in Dubai because he’s coaching Mathieu.

Mathieu is another of those players who was supposed to be the savior of French tennis. It makes me worry about his fellow countryman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Jo-Willy smashed his way onto the scene with a transcendent run to the Australian final and there are now huge expectations for him and he hasn’t even won a tournament yet. It also makes me appreciate cranky Murray just that much more. Murray is the only hope in the U.K. – they don’t have a Mathieu, Richard Gasquet, and a Tsonga – and yet Murray’s pulling if off and he’s doing it at 20 years old by throwing off the British tennis association’s plans for him and choosing his own crew. I believe, for instance, that Wilander is under contract to the French tennis association. Does anyone know for sure?

A graphic on the pixellated screen showed that Roddick has about 1.7 sec to get his racket on his opponent’s return of serve when he hits one of his humongous serves. That’s less time than counting out “one elephant two elephant…” This came up in John Isner’s match yesterday in Las Vegas because Isner hit a 148mph (238kph) serve. That kind of speed makes it hard to serve and volley because the ball gets to the opponent so quickly the server doesn’t have time to get to the net.

The big servers are usually the bigger, taller guys and they’re not the best movers so it’s harder for them to pick up a well-struck return. That puts all the more pressure on them to serve big and further limits their game. Of course, you don’t expect your opponent to return a huge serve but the top players can return anything just below the upper limits of servedom and that explains, in a nutshell, Fed’s dominance over Roddick.

On this day, though, our much maligned Mr. Roddick was getting in his quota of big serves and he kept the ball in play long enough for Mathieu to make errors. Roddick played an excellent match and won it in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4. Next up for Roddick is Rafael Nadal. If Roddick can play even better from the baseline and throw in a few more aces, he has a chance to beat Mr. Nadal too.