Lindsay Davenport returned to Fed Cup play and and lost her first ever Fed Cup match on U.S. soil.

Next week is Davis Cup week for the men and this week is Federation Cup week for the women. It’s early in the Fed Cup cycle so we weren’t looking for any titanic battles, most of the ties looked foreordained.

For instance, the U.S. started its tie with Germany by throwing Lindsay Davenport against Sabine Lisicki. I had never heard of Lisicki. Part of that is on me – she made it to the third round at the Australian Open as a qualifier – but she’s hardly a household name. Now I definitely know her name. She beat Lindsay rather easily, 6-1, 7-5, to put Germany up 1-0.

Lindsay is still making her way back onto the tour after having a baby last year and I hadn’t see her play till she met up with Maria Sharapova in Melbourne. Lindsay looked flat-footed and slow as Sharapova hit her off the court but how could I judge Lindsay’s prospects from that encounter? Sharapova pushed everyone off the court in Melbourne.

Lindsay was 13-1 last year and she’s 6-1 this year but Lisicki pushed her off the court too. Lisicki hit behind her, in front of her, and went for more than the average number of drop shots. Lindsay might have had trouble warming up in the first set because it was cold at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club in balmy San Diego. Coulda been the ocean breeze I suppose.

But after Lisicki gave away a break of serve with four double faults in the second set, Lindsay couldn’t close out the set. Facing break point at 5-3, Lindsay couldn’t run down a shot to the corner. She had a set point against Lisicki in the next game but stood there flat footed as yet another shot landed in the corner.

Lisicki pulled that game out with an ace and a beautiful inside out forehand that dropped over the net short and curled out of the court. She’s a gutsy player – she won this match despite eleven double faults and 33 errors – but I’m not feeling all that positive about Lindsay’s future at the moment. If the 130th ranked player can move Lindsay around at will, surely many other players can do the same thing.

If you were wondering if Lindsay lost because she played poorly or Lisicki played so well, here was Lindsay’s answer to that question after the match:

I think it was probably a little of both. I mean, obviously disappointed with the way I went out there and played. But at the same time, she played very well and had a lot to do with that.

Lindsay also said something rather interesting about Lisicki’s breakthrough at the Australian Open:

I think the Australian Open was the first big tournament she played well at, and she’s young. It’s a lot easier to play so well when you’re young.

It’s easier to play well when your young. Now that is a backhanded complement. Either Lindsay is feeling old or she’s feeling a bit sorry for herself. She’s referring to the fact that Lisicki had no pressure on her because she wasn’t expected to win the match but Lisicki was also playing a three time slam champion who is now the all time money leader of the women’s tour and she won the match in straight sets.

Fed Cup rookie Ashley Harkleroad saved Lindsay’s butt with a 6-1, 6-3 win over Tatiana Malek in the second match to even the tie at 1-1. Lindsay and Ashley will play reverse singles tomorrow and Lindsay will play the doubles match with Lisa Raymond.

Did you see the huge pink, bejeweled ring on U.S. Fed Cup captain Zina Garrison’s middle finger by the way? Wow, that is something to behold. Lindsay doesn’t have the company of the Williams sisters to help her this week. I did have a quick thought that it might be a silent protest to the end of Zina Garrison’s tenure as Fed Cup captain. Mary Joe Fernandez is a Fed Cup coach this year and will take over for Garrison next year.

There’s a bit on intrigue in the Fed Cup tie between Russia and Israel too. Sharapova is playing in her first Fed Cup match so that she can qualify for the Olympics. Missing, though, are Svetlana Kuznetsova and Nadia Petrova. There is speculation that they didn’t want to play on a team with Sharapova. They’re probably not happy that they are the players who did all the heavy lifting that led to a Fed Cup championship and here comes Sharapova to make a cameo appearance just so that she can win a gold medal.

Russian player Dinara Safina did turn up but she lost to Israel’s Shahar Peer. Things might sort themselves out. The U.S. could well win the its tie and Russia is likely to beat Israel. Still, it’s not the foregone conclusion we thought it might be.

Novak Djokovic receives his 2008 Australian Open award after winning the final over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

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Now that the competition has ended at this year’s Australian Open, let’s look at some of the commercial and political issues that temporarily faded into the background while we were watching the fabulous play of Jo-Willie Tsonga, Maria Sharapova and Novak Djokovic

The Australians are concerned that they’ll lose their slam event to China. Shanghai is waiting with its gleaming Qi Zhong Tennis Centre and gobs of money to bid for the tournament, while the Melbourne Park facility has faded over time. Qi Zhong hosted the ATP Championships for the past three years and will host a Masters Series event starting in 2009. The Australian government is chipping in some money for a Melbourne Park upgrade but there is a second problem: the tournament is getting a reputation for unruly crowds.

Last year there was a brawl between Serbs and Croats and this year there were two notable incidents. Three Greek fans were arrested and surrounding fans were hit with pepper spray during a match between Fernando Gonzalez and Konstantinos Economidis. Novak Djokovic’s family was surrounded by security during his final against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga after Djokovic’s family complained about the behavior of Tsonga supporters.

If the Australian Open is worried about losing the slam because of its growing reputation for unruly fans, that’s a battle they will surely lose to China. You will not see fan violence at a Chinese sporting event. Chinese fans are well aware that they live in an oppressive country and the government will not tolerate that kind of behavior.

The Chinese government has already started imprisoning dissidents in preparation for this year’s Olympics. The New York Times reported today that Hu Jia, a human rights activist, was imprisoned last month on charges of subverting state power. Among other things, Hu was involved in the case of a factory worker who started the “We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics” petition drive.

The Olympics have become an important political and commercial symbol and that brings up interesting conflicts. NBA player Ira Newble and most of his teammates signed an open letter to the Chinese government urging them to resolve the crisis in the Darfur before the summer Olympics begins. Darfur is in Sudan, a major source of oil for China.

Should you use the Olympics to pressure the host team to make political change or should you go in there and force a bit more capitalism on them? Newble’s teammate LeBron James was one of the few players on the team who did not sign the letter. James and his marketing team are using the Beijing Olympics to increase his commercial visibility in Asia which is a huge market.

As the following example shows you, the two approaches can be combined. Many of us complained when professional tennis started selling its tournament slots to the highest bidder which, these day, is likely to be an Asian country. Some of those tournaments went to Arabic countries which don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Israeli players Shahar Peer, Jonathan Erlich, and Andy Ram were unlikely to travel to the Dubai Open because Israel has told its citizens not the go there. That is about to change. Erlich and Ram – the current Australian Open doubles champions – announced that they will play in the 2008 Dubai Open. The ATP has told them that they can provide adequate security.

This is even more important because the WTA Championships are in Qatar for the next three years and Peer is a top twenty player. Dubai and Qatar have been switching their economies from oil to tourism because their oil reserves will not last forever and that’s why they’ve been buying sporting events. This is a good example of commercial interests influencing political change.

I’d like to applaud the ATP and the WTA for being agents of social change but I suspect they were mainly interested in selling to the highest bidder and increasing their presence on the global market. Am I being too cynical?

One more look at the turning point of the Australian Open final between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Novak Djokovic. Djokovic breaks Tsonga at 4-3 in the second set. to change the momentum of the match.

One more look at Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s amazing victory over Rafel Nadal in the Australian Open semifinals

Now that the Australian Open is over and Novak Djokovic took home the men’s title, let’s go back to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s semifinal victory over Rafael Nadal because this was as close to a perfect match as I’ve ever seen.

Tsonga himself was stunned at the end of it. I’ve seen people in the zone before but they were usually high level players who’d been around for a while. And even then, they usually fell out of the zone at some point in the match. Tsonga never did.

In yoga we call it one pointed focus. All you see and hear is the ball. Nothing distracts you from your purpose. In the first game of the match there was a stab volley and a stunning reflex volley when Nadal tried to pass Tsonga at close range. Tsonga turned the ball so sharply that it went from one sideline to the other and never reached the service line.

When a young player breaks out like this, it looks like he arrived all in one moment. You don’t see the years and years of practice and problems he worked through. The bulging disc, a stomach problem, the jitters when he was a junior, the chubby body that preceded the muscular one you see today. But Tsonga played through all of it and, on this day, everything came together and he played the perfect match.

Tsonga was up 5-2 already and Nadal looked rattled. He put a jump overhead into the net. Tsonga then hammered a forehand down the line and left Nadal standing there staring at the ball. I mean Jo-Willie was overpowering. On the next point he hit an approach and followed that with a racket-deadening drop volley that wilted and died on the court. The thing is that this was an accident. He mishit it. That’s what happens when you’re in the in the space that Tsonga was occupying.

You can’t play like this unless you’re relaxed and easy because you couldn’t respond quickly enough. You’d bee too tight. Thoughts would only interfere. Doubt would interfere. Worry would interfere. Fear would interfere.

When I used to dance, we called it body time. The mind was shoved aside and we were moving without thinking or doing. The body responded with lightning quick movement because it knew just what to do. You couldn’t think too much not only because it would slow you down but because you’d fall out of body time and the fraction of difference in response is the difference between a hit and miss.

Tsonga won the first set 6-2. Now it was real. This wasn’t just a streak, he was destroying Nadal and he wasn’t working that hard at it.

Here’s another thing and it has always puzzled me: why is Rafa so successful at holding serve? Yes he moves his serve around and changes speed and spin, but his first serve averages under 110mph (177kmh). Tsonga had no trouble returning it. He won almost half of the points on his return of serve.

Things that were going right for Tsonga were going wrong for Rafa. Tsonga hit a volley that Rafa could have gotten to easily but he tripped and lost his racket. Even when Tsonga hit an average shot, he got away with it.

Then it got ridiculous. Serving at 1-1 in the second set Tsonga hit a serve and ran in behind it. Nadal’s return bounced at his feet but Tsonga managed to short-hop it for yet another dropper. If Tsonga looks a bit like Muhammad Ali, he was also playing like him. Jo-Willie was rope-a-doping Rafa: smash the ball then soften it and hit the drop shot. Deep then short then hard then soft. The ropes in this case being the baseline, the sideline, and the service line and Tsonga hit them all night long.

Three games later and now we were just laughing because how more ridiculous could it get? Nadal hit a forehand that drove Tsonga outside the doubles line then followed that up with his own drop shot just a few feet over the net. Tsonga ran from one corner of the court to the other and hit the ball up the line and past Nadal. The guy is 6ft 2in (187cm) and 200lbs (90kg) and he just outhustled Nadal, the fastest guy on tour.

It’s not like Nadal was playing poorly. He wasn’t making errors, he got almost 70% of his first serves in, and he hit tough dipping passing shots. At 4-3 Nadal hit another dipper at Tsonga’s backhand. Tsonga smacked his racket on the ground as he stabbed at the ball and came up with yet another perfect drop shot. One more fancy volley and a jump overhead and Tsonga served for the set. His third ace in the game came in at 139mph (224kmh).

Certainly Roger Federer has played his share of exceptional matches so what was so special about this? It’s a slam, it’s the semis and Tsonga is not just winning, he’s slaying the competition: a slow court specialist who hadn’t lost a set on this slow hard court. I’ve never seen an unseeded guy dominate the competition so clearly this late in a slam.

Tsonga was so focused that everything was easy for him. He didn’t have to think about it. He floated off the court at the end still in his focused state. Then he remembered, he’d just eased his way into a grand slam final and he could barely believe it.