We haven’t been paying enough attention to tournament play lately so I’m going to start in picking tournaments this week. The spring indoor hard court season is well underway as is the South American clay court season. Let’s see what’s happening.

San Jose (indoor hard court)

Kei Nishikori has a special exemption into this tournament because he shocked James Blake by beating him in the Delray Beach final last week. Nishikori is an 18 year old Bollettieri-trained player from Japan who qualified into the tournament. I believe he has now equaled the record for ATP singles titles won by Japanese male players: 1.

Nishikoro should be careful though. Jiro Sato reached slam semifinals five times in the 1930’s, but the pressure of representing his country got to him and he committed suicide at age 26. He threw himself into the Strait of Malacca during a Davis Cup trip.

Nishikori is in Andy Roddick’s quarter and even though Nishikori has more game than Blake and, possibly Roddick, I’m going to say that it’ll take him a bit more time to mature. The other strong player in that quarter is Sam Querrey. Roddick beat him here last year and I think he’ll do it again. If Nishikori does take Roddick out, watch out because he beat Querrey last week too.

Tommy Haas is returning after more shoulder problems but he doesn’t have much competition in his quarter. Ditto for Radek Stepanek in his quarter.

James Blake hasn’t done well at this tournament since 2003 and his possible second round opponent, Jesse Levine, has an excellent indoor record at indoor challengers. I’m picking Kristof Vliegen to come out of Blake’s quarter.

San Jose Draw

Semifinals: Roddick, Haas, Stepanek, Vliegen.
Final: Roddick, Stepanek
Winner: Roddick because Andy Murray isn’t here to torture him.

Rotterdam (indoor hard court)

Murray is here instead. For some reason he’s defending the points he won with his 2007 San Jose title by playing in Rotterdam. I’m willing to bet Rotterdam has a lot more appearance money than San Jose judging by the comparative fields of these two tournaments. Rotterdam has five top ten players while San Jose has one.

Murray is in the bottom quarter with Nikolay Davydenko and he’s beaten him the last three times they’ve met and he won Marseille last week so he’s my guy.

Just above him lie David Ferrer and Tomas Berdych. Berdych is an average indoor player and might not be able to get by Ivo Karlovic so I’m choosing Ferrer in that quarter.

The next quarter up is all mixed up. Juan Carlos Ferrero and Mikhail Youzhny both lost their first round matches. Tommy Robredo is there but he’s having a terrible year so I’m going with Nicolas Mahut.

Rafael Nadal is in the top quarter and he has Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis for company, poor guy. Even if Baghdatis gets past Robin Soderling, he’s 0-5 against Nadal. Hewitt is 4-3 over Nadal lifetime and has never lost to him on a fast court, but most of those wins came before 2006 and Nadal retired during the last match they played on grass, so I think Nadal can survive the quarter.

Rotterdam Draw

Semifinals: Nadal, Mahut, Ferrer, Murray
Final: Nadal, Murray
Winner: Nadal because he beat Murray indoors in Madrid last year.

Buenos Aires (clay)

There’s no one dangerous in David Nalbandian’s quarter. He can probably beat Potito Starace who is just returning from his petty gambling suspension. By the way, a fourth Italian player, Giorgio Galimberti, was suspended today for gambling on tennis matches though not his own. Galimberti got a $35,000 fine and a 100 day suspension.

Nicolas Almagro is in the next quarter and he won the tournament in Brazil last week but his possible second round opponent, Oscar Hernandez, beat him twice in Futures and Challenger tournaments and Almagro is notoriously inconsistent. Juan Ignacio Chela reached the quarterfinals here last year so I’m going with him.

Carlos Moya can probably come through his quarter. He’s won this tournament three times and he got to the final in Brazil last week.

Juan Monaco injured his ankle three weeks ago at Vina del Mar and that was unfortunate because he had to forfeit his place in the final. If his ankle is healed he should be okay because he won this tournament last year.

Buenos Aires Draw

Semifinals: Nalbandian, Chela, Moya, Monaco
Final: Nalbandian, Monaco
Winner: Nalbandian

As Monica Seles retires, a look back at how her career might have gone.

Martina Hingis returned to the WTA tour in 2006 after a three year layoff due to foot problems. She managed to work her way up to a year end ranking of number seven and played in the year end championships – very respectable considering her layoff.

At Wimbledon this year, Hingis tested positive for cocaine. In November she announced her retirement for good. I thought about her when Monica Seles announced her retirement this week.

Hingis lost something in the time between her first retirement and her return to the tour. She had the same skills that gave her the nickname “cerebral assassin” but she’d lost the drive that allows an athlete to block out distractions and give up everything except practice, travel, and play. The positive cocaine test was an indirect – and somewhat embarrassing – confirmation of this. It’s as if some part of her admitted that she didn’t want to go through the grind anymore and forced her to finally retire.

Seles left the tour for two years after a deranged fan of Steffi Graf stabbed her in the back during a tournament in Hamburg in 1993. When Seles returned to the tour in 1995, she’d lost her fierceness and that was a huge part of her game. Her two-handed off both sides strokes were ugly, she didn’t have much of a serve, and her net game wasn’t really a net game – she hit the ball as if she were still standing at the baseline. But she killed you off the ground with ferocious power.

She still had enough left to get to four slam finals when she returned to the tour, but she only took home one slam title. Before the stabbing, she was 8-1 in slam finals. She didn’t lose all of her fierceness but it was enough.

I understand it. A man threatened me with a hunting knife in the early 1980’s and would have raped me if I hadn’t pretended to have an epileptic fit. I was sure I was going to die. In the months after the attack, I had to leave the room when there was a story on television showing coercion, which is much of prime time programming, and I couldn’t sit through a violent movie. I moved out of my house because my roommate – a very close friend – refused to lock the back door. He just didn’t get it.

The next summer I visited Rome. I was up on a hill at a popular tourist site that looks out over the city when a random man walked up behind me and scared me so badly that I relived the attack all over again. Seles’ assailant attacked her in the open air on a tennis court. Before she returned to playing – which must have been bad enough, she attended a few tournaments but it was an unsettling experience because she kept looking around to make sure no one was lunging at her with a knife.

Before the stabbing, Seles dominated the tour in Federer-like fashion. She won three slams in both 1991 and 1992 leaving only Wimbledon for Graf to win. Before Seles was stabbed, Graf had eleven slam titles and she’d won a grand slam – all four slams – in 1988. She went on to win 22 slams in her career.

Would Graf have won eleven more slams if Seles hadn’t been stabbed? If not, how many?

Seles got to the final of Wimbledon in 1992 and lost to Graf but it was the only time Seles went past the quarterfinals. Graf would have kept her three Wimbledon titles. For sure, Seles would have eaten up two or three more French Opens and a U.S. Open or two. Throw in an Australian Open and Graf’s total would be down to about six slams at most.

That would bring Graf’s slam total to 17 which is also my guess for how many slams Seles could have won without the interruption in her career. That’s one less than Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, a rivalry that Seles and Graf could have duplicated if things had gone differently.

Seles faced Graf in two more slam finals after the stabbing, both times in the U.S. Open and both times she lost. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult that must have been for both players.

Sania Mirza is in trouble again. Why does this keep happening to her?

The Bangalore Open will start on March 3 but Sania Mirza won’t be there and that’s a big deal because Sania is a huge star in India. Why isn’t she going? As she puts it:

Every time I play in India there is a problem. Considering all that, I thought it would be better not to play in Bangalore. In fact, I feel it would be better if I didn’t play in the country for some time.

What problems? Well, first there was tennis wear. Muslims complained about her indecent short skirts and sleeveless tops and called them “un-Islamic.” Sania is Muslim by the way.

Then there was safe sex. In 2005 she made comments at a leadership summit in Delhi about safe sex that were interpreted as endorsing pre-marital sex.

Next, trespassing. Late last year she shot a commercial on the premises of a 17th century mosque in her home town of Hyderabad. She faced charges of trespassing and had to apologize for the incident.

And now, flag desecration. While Sania was playing Hopman Cup in January, she rested her bare feet on a table that was several feet from an Indian flag. A private citizen filed a case against her under the Prevention of Insult to the National Honor Act. She had to appear in a Bhopal court to answer to the charges.

When I read about these troubles, first I shook my head and muttered something about religious intolerance. Next, I wondered if the male tennis players in India get as much grief as Sania does. Do they get taken to court all the time? Then I thought, it’s not so simple, the male players probably aren’t Muslim.

Luckily, our reader Sakhi came to my rescue. I mentioned I was going to write about Sania and she pointed me to an article in the Hindustan Times titled Disadvantage Sania. Sakhi is, I believe, a professor of Women’s Studies and of Indian heritage so she knows what she’s talking about.

I, on the other hand, took one class in social theory at The New School and spent a total of three weeks in India so I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m very happy for any help I can get.

Interestingly, the author of the article, Barkha Dutt, doesn’t mention the word Muslim. She does refer to “fundamentalist fatwas” but she thinks that India has a love-hate relationship with Sania because she’s “the only female sports icon India has ever known.”

Dutt is an icon herself. She was the first Indian woman journalist to broadcast live from the front line of an armed conflict and she is the director of India’s premiere satellite television network. Her mother was also a pioneer. She sent news dispatches from the front during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.

Clearly Dutt knows what she’s talking about too and she blames the media for some of Sania’s troubles. If you’re an icon, you’ll be covered 24/7. That’s just how it is. But again, it’s not so simple. Sania signed endorsement deals that plaster her face all over India. I remember driving through Kerala on the southwest coast of India and seeing Sania’s face on telephone company ads in the tiniest villages.

She is also one hot young woman. She definitely qualifies as a tennis babe. I like that, don’t get me wrong, but being sexy is a choice and if you make that choice in India, a modest country, be prepared for being an icon and everything that comes with it.

When Sakhi directed me to this article, she also brought up the issue of class. Sania was raised in an upper middle class family. I’m pretty sure she didn’t depend on support from the Indian tennis association to develop her game so she doesn’t have to worry about offending Indian tennis officials. She also a number of members that live in the U.S. so living elsewhere is an option. It’s a lot easier to be brash and outspoken when you have options.

Dutt does mention a brash male athlete who is often at the center of controversy: cricket player Sourav Ganguly. He had a long public feud with the coach of India’s national team and was stripped of his captaincy and kicked off the team at one point. He also had the nerve to tear off his shirt in a victory celebration. I looked it up: he grew up in an affluent family too.

Here’s the question: Should Sania make India mad and stop playing tournaments in India?

Dutt thinks Sania should stick around and finish what she started and you can understand that. Dutt comes from a family of pioneers. But I disagree.

Sania’s job is to play tennis. She’s a very emotional player and she’s only 22 years old. I was at the WTA event in Los Angeles last year when the chair umpire made a bad overrule on a critical point in a match that Sania lost. Sania was furious. Normally players have a time limit for appearing at post match interviews but the WTA media person was in no hurry to drag Sania out of the locker room after that match.

Sania should do whatever puts her in the best emotional state to play tennis. She should work her way up the rankings, win a few big tournaments, make her way into the top ten, and then return triumphant to the Bangalore Open.

ESPN has reported that the ATP had evidence of match fixing before the Davydenko match and the French Open wants gambling to just go away.

I bought a used car while I was staying in Santa Fe one summer. I had the car checked out before I bought it and the repair shop told me that the timing belt needed to be replaced. I’m only using the car for the summer, I thought to myself, the belt should be o.k. for a few months.One night, my friend Margaret and I drove to Albuquerque for the weekend. We’d just taken a left exit from route I-25 and we were entering the fast lane on route I-40 – one of the busiest interstate interchanges in the country – when the timing belt broke and the car rolled to a stop.

Here we were, precariously lodged on the edge of a highway while cars bore down on us as they ramped up their speed to enter the fast lane of the upcoming highway and all we had was a puny flashlight to wave at oncoming traffic. We were lucky no one ran us down and even luckier that nobody else died as they swerved their car to avoid us

This past week, ESPN reported the results of four months research into the Nikolay Davydenko/Martin Vassallo-Arguello match at Sopot in August of last year. All bets on the match at Betfair, an online gambling site, were voided because the betting pattern looked like the match had been fixed. ESPN’s research shows that the ATP had evidence of match fixing before the Davydenko match and didn’t do anything about it. That’s what happens when don’t take care of a problem even though you’re aware of it. It blows up in your face.

According to ESPN, Richard Ings, the ATP’s vice president of rules and competition, had evidence of a suspicious relationship between a big time gambler and an ATP player in 2005. The gambler was an Austrian named Martin Führer, and the player was Irakli Labadze who is from Georgia. Führer had befriended Labadze by hanging around ATP tournaments and he was making a lot of money from matches that Labadze lost. It got to the point where bookmakers refused to take bets from Führer.

Interestingly, the ATP fined Labadze $7500 for lack of effort in one of those matches. It was a foreshadowing of the $2,000 fine Davydenko received for lack of effort at the St. Petersburg Open last year. Davydenko successfully appealed the fine.

Ings was the guy who set up an agreement with Betfair to notify the ATP whenever they found an irregular betting pattern. He also had access to Betfair’s database and he used it to research Führer’s bets. However, Ings left the ATP a few months later and the ATP never followed up on his findings.

To be fair, match fixing is not easy to prove. ATP CEO Etienne de Villiers said as much to ESPN about the Davydenko match: “We may never know. We may get to the point where we think we know but we can’t prove it.” The match had an irregular betting pattern and the ATP knows who laid the biggest bets on the match, but that doesn’t prove it was fixed. For that you need evidence that gamblers asked Davydenko to throw the match.

Dealing with match fixing is not easy but the next step tennis has taken to deal with the problem of gambling is rather pathetic. The organizers of the French Open have filed an injunction against Betfair, Bwin and Ladbrokes, three online gambling sites, to stop them from taking bets on the event.

The injunction states that gambling companies are tainting the reputation of the French Open and using the tournament to make money. The organizers sound like a 5 year old refusing to eat spinach: “I hate spinach. Make it go away!”

Here is the problem with the complaints in the injunction.

Gambling sites may indirectly be tainting the French Open’s reputation by taking bets from gamblers who are fixing matches, but match fixing has been going on in all sports for all time. I’ve no doubt someone rubbed down a wrestler with grease at the ancient Greek Olympics then ran off to the local bookie and laid a bet on the guy.

Gambling on the French Open won’t stop unless you make all sports gambling illegal and even then, it won’t stop, it’ll just be forced underground. In that case, you might not notice irregular betting patterns and it might be much harder to find the gamblers who laid the bets whereas online gambling sites give you that information in real time.

Here’s the problem with the complaint that gamblers are making money off the French Open. The result of a sporting event is a news item. There’s nothing proprietary about a news item. I can lay a bet that Britney Spears will be back in a mental ward within six months – hey, I should take that bet – and Britney can’t do anything about.

This issue has already been addressed by the U.S. judicial systems in the case of CDM Sports versus Major League Baseball Advanced Media. MLBAM was charging a licensing fee to fantasy baseball sites to use its players’ statistics but you can find statistics in the box scores in any newspaper No one pays for them.

Laws in Europe may differ but I doubt it. You can’t charge someone for information that everyone gets for free and you can’t prevent newspapers from printing the outcome of a sporting event.

Professional tennis has worked closely with the British Horseracing Authority in the aftermath of the Davydenko match. I don’t see the BHA filing injunctions and clearing gamblers out of racing tracks. Other sports have had gambling controversies and match fixing. That’s how it is.

Tennis needs to make up for lost time and handle gambling the same way horseracing and soccer handle it. That starts by accepting gambling instead of avoiding it or wishing it away.

Earlier this week I argued that Davis Cup should switch their format to a yearly two week event instead of a series of four home and away matches throughout the year. Then I got to thinking…

What makes Davis Cup special? Answer: unruly crowds, bad calls and extreme surfaces. Take the Davis Cup tie between the U.S. and Austria this weekend as an example. The Austrians dumped a bunch of red clay on the floor of a velodrome a few days before the event started and called it a clay court even though it had a bald spot a few feet inside the baseline – you could see through to the surface below.

See that Andy Roddick Powerade commercial above? That shot is fake. There’s no way Roddick could impale the ball into the court unless he stuffed a tennis ball in a bazooka gun and shot it straight down at the court. He might come close on the Austrian court though. It was that loose and soft.

All the better for Roddick’s opponent, Jurgen Melzer, to hit his funky two handed backhand drop shot. Time and again he hit the ball deep then followed that up with a drop shot then followed that up with a passing shot. Each time Roddick had to run a for a drop shot he looked like one of those cartoon characters whose feet are spinning like crazy but going nowhere.

Late in the second set, the ball took a bad bounce and flew way over Roddick’s racket. In the fourth set, a Melzer serve skidded underneath Roddick’s racket. Did they mix some pebbles in with the clay or just forget to smooth it out.

Roddick essentially skips the clay court season each year yet he bangs out long clay court victories in Davis Cup and he did it again today. He beat Melzer in five sets, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-3, because he won the big points. He refused to lose.

Melzer was serving to stay in the first set and had Roddick on the run when he hit an average approach shot. Roddick passed him to get a set point and one point later won the first set. Roddick ran down just enough balls for Melzer to make a mistake.

Would Roddick play with so much pride if Davis Cup was a two week tournament? Doesn’t a lot of his pride come from playing in front of a hostile crowd in his opponent’s country or in front of his home crowd?

And one more thing, if Davis Cup becomes a two week tournament, how would it be different from Hopman Cup or the team event at Dusseldorf except in length? Davis Cup would be yet another tournament competing with other tournaments for players.
I stand corrected. Leave Davis Cup alone. This is too much fun.

James Blake had much less trouble with Stefan Koubek. He beat him rather easily in four sets, 5-7, 7-5, 6-2, 6-2. Bob and Mike Bryan beat Julian Knowle and Melzer, 6-1, 6-4, 6-2, in Saturday’s doubles match and so the U.S. passes through to the quarterfinals where they’ll play France.

There weren’t any bad line calls and the home crowd wasn’t totally out of control though they did annoy Roddick. Maybe I’ll get my unruly crowds and bad line calls in the next round.