I’m in the early stages of Fed and Rafa withdrawal. Roger Federer waylaid his serve in the U.S. Open final and faded away in the fifth set last time I saw him. He begged off the entire Asian swing with a supposed bad back. This year was probably a temporary respite from Roger’s inevitable decline.

Rafael Nadal usually fades in the fall but this year he went down in his favorite season – red clay. He’s back now but he lost 3-6, 1-6, to Marin Cilic in the Beijing semifinals last week. He’s still in the Shanghai Masters draw this week but that score indicates one of two things: Nadal has lingering physical problems or he’s mentally/physically tired.

I haven’t yet put images of Fed and Rafa on the altar next to my cousin Vanna who died on September 6, but I am preparing myself for the end of yet another sustaining relationship and, at the moment, I’m reduced to watching Gael Monfils pound Paul-Henri Mathieu. Monfils made a few of his usual jaw-dropping saves – including a ridiculous lob winner off a running forehand that he shanked – but Mathieu was missing in action.

Fed and Rafa were seldom, if ever, missing in action. After they’re gone are we headed for a few years of the dreaded concept of parity and is that a good thing or not? Parity means that anyone can win on any day. It’s the direct opposite of the monopoly held by Fed and Rafa. Since 2006 they’ve won every slam except two. That’s a record of 14-2 against the rest of the field.

After the Monfils-Mathieu match I watched Andy Roddick go down with a knee injury as if to demonstrate his recent complaints about the absurdly long 11 month season. The point being that Rafa is the future rather than Fed as we are likely to see shorter tennis careers and fewer four-year monopolies.

In the U.S., football and basketball leagues have pretty good parity because each team has a salary cap – a limit on the total team salary. Having said that, football is a much healthier sport than basketball. That explains why the National Football League will probably succeed in preventing conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh and his investment group from buying the St. Louis franchise: there will be multiple offers for the team and the NFL can say that it chose the better financial offer rather than saying it chose to avoid the controversy that will come with Limbaugh.

The National Basketball Association, on the other hand, allowed Russian Mikhail Prokhorov to invest $200 million into one of its franchises because it had no better offer from anyone in North America. I bring this up because tennis has already been down this road. They expanded into Asia and they gave Dubai a men’s and women’s tournament despite the controversy that was sure to follow.

A lot of professional sports leagues have suffered from expansion. In most cases, unsuccessful expansion ends with contraction – leagues fold unprofitable franchises. And a number of tennis tournaments have folded but only to turn up elsewhere in the world.

Mainly it looks like expansion will result in quicker player turnover and fewer Fed and Rafa monopolies. Just give me a while, I’ll get used it. Honest, I will.

One last thought. The end of the service let seems to be quietly making its way through the tennis world. The NCAA eliminated the service let and the ITF is experimenting with it in lower level Davis Cup matches. Should the ATP and the WTA eliminate the service let?

The most compelling counter argument is the following scenario: the server has match point and is up 11-10 in the fifth set of the Wimbledon final. He hits a serve that dribbles over the net and into his opponent’s service box and the match is over. Essentially, luck has handed him the match.

The rebuttal: what’s the difference between a serve that just dribbles over the net and a groundstroke netcord in the same situation? There’s no difference that I know of and there are far fewer serves than groundstrokes in a match, but if people are really concerned about a service netcord ending a match, then eliminate the service let except on set point.

What do you think?

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Some items in the sports section look pretty frivolous compared to the civil wars and natural disasters in the world news section or the health care debate in the U.S. news section. But I often find sports burrowing itself very deeply into my life. Recently I’ve used sports as a tool for grieving.

Many people in my life have died in the past few years and the grieving has profoundly affected my day-to-day life. The major disturbance was a sleep disorder. I’d go to sleep just fine but I’d wake up in the middle of the night and that was it, I’d be awake for the rest of the night.

My yoga teacher suggested I have conversations with people who’d died because it doesn’t matter how old someone is when they die, or whether someone died unexpectedly or not, you always have unfinished business with them. But I couldn’t get into it. I’m a poor actor I guess.

Luckily life gives you situations in the present that allow you to resolve painful experiences from the past.

The nights before I played tennis, I couldn’t sleep at all. Especially nights before my Friday tennis group. I’d played with them for seven years but recently the leader of the group, who’d always been very inclusive, started sending weaker players off to other courts while he played with the best players.

The weaker group now included me because it’s pretty hard to run around the court on no sleep. I confronted the leader about his behavior but he acted as if nothing had changed. My father behaved in much the same way. He wasn’t big on discussion. When I’d visited him in New York City in the 1970s, he called his friend in Rome to complain that I was wearing pants (instead of a skirt) rather than say something directly to me.

The leader of the Friday group had taught me a lot about tennis and he was something of a father figure. It was painful but I told him I wouldn’t play with him until his inclusive ways returned then siphoned off part of the group to play elsewhere. My father was dead but tangling with a father figure in the present helped me resolve some of my frustration towards my long gone father and sleep returned.

Well, some of it returned. I had trouble sleeping before my Wednesday tennis game and for help with that I went, again, to my yoga teacher. He asked me to think about how wonderful I’d feel when I reached my tennis goal of a 4.5 ranking and I immediately burst into tears. All I could think about was calling up my friend Billy and screaming out my supreme delight at finally having reached my goal.

Except that Billy probably wouldn’t have answered the phone. He isn’t among the recently dead but he’s fallen into a deep depression and while he manages to take care of himself, he’s essentially a hermit. I had to transfer my possible celebration elsewhere so I asked two tennis friends if they’d throw a small party for me if and when I reached my goal.

It won’t be the celebration I was looking forward to but it was enough to restore my sleep and, who knows, maybe some day Billy will answer the phone.

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[Correction appended]

I’m off to a U.S. Open costume party (I’m going as Elton John complete with stacked silver heels, rhinestone studded glasses and my Mo Connelly wooden racket, image to follow later), but first I have a few questions for you about Serena’s outburst at the U.S. Open (see above):

1. Will foot faults be reviewable before there’s a roof on Arthur Ashe stadium?
2. While a foot fault is not as important as a line call, is there any reason a foot fault should not be called on an important point?
3. Should foot faults be eliminated?
4. Has there been an increase in foot fault calls in the past year or so or is it just me?
5. Have you ever seen a line judge approach the chair umpire and complain about a player’s behavior before?
6. Do you think a line judge at one of the other three (non U.S.) slams would have approached the chair umpire?
7. Would the chair umpire have given Serena the point penalty that ended the match if the line judge had not approached the chair?
8. Should Serena have lost the match for her outburst?

Let’s hear it.

[Correction: One should never put up a post in the middle of dressing up like Elton John, it’s too distracting. Apparently the line judge was called by the chair umpire so questions 5-7 are are irrelevant. As for the other questions, please weight in.]

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My, my, my, Marin Cilic has taken out Andy Murray in the round of 16 at the U.S. Open and it wasn’t close. On the flip side, Kim Clijsters beat Li Na in the quarterfinals and that wasn’t close either. What do I mean by flip side? Murray had tons of expectations and Clijsters very few.

Clijsters was famous for being “the best player never to have won a slam” before winning the 2005 U.S. Open then retiring in the spring of 2007. And now she’s managed to do something that is very rare: create a low pressure situation for a seasoned professional. She did it by leaving the tour for two years then returning with a kid in tow. When I twitted this theory, ESPN’s Bonnie D. Ford responded by pointing out that Clijsters did choose to come back in the heart of the U.S. Open Series. True, but all the more reason for expectations to be lower.

Murray may have an excuse. He might have a wrist injury. We won’t really know until he comes out with his second (and counting) memoir in which he might reveal that his wrist was killing him by way of explaining how it took him so long to win his first slam. Anything but the pressure. For example, look at this exchange after he lost to Cilic:

Q. There were some people that were picking you to win this tournament coming in. Did you ever feel any pressure or expectations on you?
ANDY MURRAY: No. I put pressure on myself to win the tournaments. I mean, it’s nice to hear sometimes from the other players or, you know, ex players, but it doesn’t really make a difference to who win who wins or loses the tournament. They’re not out there on the court with you, so it doesn’t make any difference.

No genuine pretender to the crown admits to injury or weakness under pressure and that may be part of Dinara Safina’s problem. I can’t remember the last time any player was under such pressure to win a slam and while it’s not nice to blame the victim, she does feed the frenzy by repeatedly discussing her mental weaknesses as she did again this weak:

I go to the court with so much that I want to win, and I put so much tension in it, I guess, not to lose, and that’s why I’m not playing relaxed, instead of just going out there and just play, let it go. I can’t control when I lose but, come on, do your thing. But I’m in too much not to lose a match. It’s blocking me.

Safina’s main source of pressure, Serena Williams, has little pressure herself. She has now won three of the last four slams and absolutely nothing in between. She’s the anti-Dinara. By the way, has anyone ever done that before? Pete Sampras didn’t win anything in the two years between his 2000 Wimbledon title and his 2002 U.S. Open title. That’s the best I’ve got. Anyone got anything else?

In the parallel realm of U.S. Open pressure, here are few ratings. Feel free to add your own:

1. Roger Federer: Hasn’t had this little pressure since he was hitting gorgeous backhands as a 12-year-old at Old Boys Tennis Club in Basel. He’s already passed Pete Sampra with 15 slams, he’s got the career slam, and he has the built in excuse of tiny twins to distract his attention and keep him up all night.
2. Juan Martin Del Potro: He’s only 20 years old, he didn’t really emerge until last year, he’s still growing into his body… Medium pressure.
3. Melanie Oudin: She beat Elena Dementieva and Maria Sharapova to reach the quarterfinals. Anything past the first round is unexpected for her. Negative pressure, meaning less than zero.
4. Rafael Nadal: It’s a curious thing now that I think about it but I seldom think of pressure affecting Nadal. His attitude is so humble and his media responses are so measured that we know very little about what goes on in his mind. I’m inclined to believe what he said after beating Gael Monfils today and taking back the number two ranking from Murray: “I say it every day. I am here just to try my best.” Boring but true and, incidentally, probably the healthiest attitude out there.

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A very tame Novak Djokovic lost in straight sets to Andy Roddick in Montreal yesterday. There was no preening and very little obsessive ball bouncing, instead there were a few looks of puzzlement towards his player’s box and an act of goodwill that might have come from overcompensation.

In the second set, Roddick hit a ball out that gave Nole a break of serve and a 4-1 lead. No celebrating with his player’s box for this version of Nole. He looked at the mark left by the ball then waved his racket to indicate to Roddick that he should challenge the out call. Roddick won the challenge and ended up winning the game. In the next game he broke Nole and the match was back on serve.

Normally I would applaud such an unusual act of goodness, but in Nole’s case he appears have lost his way on the journey towards finding a competitive personality he’s comfortable with. Yes he overreacted at the U.S. Open last year when Roddick tweaked him about his endless injury timeouts, but at least he beat him. Since then he’s lost all three of his matches against Roddick.

And now Nole has added Todd Martin, Mr. Nice Guy, to his team. I don’t remember what event it was but I distinctly remember Roddick sauntering to the net after a win over Martin only to be met with a lecture about his exuberant on-court behavior. First Nole gives Roddick a break, then he hires Todd Martin, and now he’s signed up to play doubles with Rafael Nadal next week in Cincy. What’s next, establishing a choir of ATP players to perform at charitable events? Babysitting for Roger Federer’s twins?

Look, Nole has a combative personality and a good sized ego and it served him well when he snarled his way to an Australian Open title. True, the crowd preferred his opponent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and they harassed his family, but ultimately the crowd goes with the winner. Trust me, they’d have come around if Nole had racked up another slam or two. A crowd can smell a poseur a mile away but if someone is constitutionally combative, they will learn to love him.

Right now Nole has to figure out who he is and I don’t know if Todd Martin has the answer for that. Nole’s advisors should find him a coach with a testy personality who encourages exuberant behavior such as this over-the-top turn on the fashion runway earlier this week in Montreal, someone who stands behind his guy, and someone who gives him room to regain some of his bad-boyness.

Any suggestions?

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