Watching the lopsided and rather boring blowouts that occurred today in the women’s semis, I could not help but think on the piece I had read earlier in the week, in the New York Times, all about how the French should bring the women’s pay up to the men’s.

The French so far have resisted. The men make 1,106,000 dollars for the winner, the women’s champ earns 1,090,000. Not much difference between the two, really.

But it’s the principle, I know. Well, it’s also economics, so thinks Jean-Claude Blanc, the head of the French Tennis Federation. He very rationally points out three reasons why this cannot occur, and try as I would like, I cannot get out from under the logic of his argument.

Number one, the men simply put in a lot more hours on court in a Grand Slam than the women do.

Number two, the women’s field is not nearly as dense down through the first fifty seedings, say, as the men’s.

And number three, which really touches on the heart of the economics of the matter, the networks prefer the men’s matches in terms of their perspective.

But all this raises a new and interesting question, would we really want to SEE five sets of the women’s matches today? Would most of the women’s tour be physically ready for that? I would say not, many of them seem to be suffering mightily just getting through two, or even three, sets let alone five. I know everyone’s working out harder these days on conditioning, but even so it is probably not to where it could be.

And I’m afraid I would, as a spectator, be obliged to suffer right along with them. Not fun, thinks I.

God, I would want to pay them equal pay just to get them the hell away. I could not take five sets of this kind of tennis. Or, at least, three sets of what we saw today. Which could not end soon enough for me.

Call me sexist, and yes maybe I am. But I want to see the women improve more. They are getting there, but Mr. Blanc is correct and the TV networks bear him out. The men’s matches are better for ratings. Because it is a better, more exciting brand of tennis.

The guys yesterday, finishing up the bottom part of the draw in the quarterfinals, put on spectacular five set marathon displays of high-spirited tennis, albeit well-seasoned with many errors.

The Robredo–Davydenko match took turns shifting back and forth. Just when the Russian seemed to falter in energy and started to give up a few games, he would recover and then reassert himself.

Robredo did the same. He has what could become a very stylish all court game if he could play the big matches more consistently. He has been hovering in the 10th-25th ranking for some time now, he is ready for a move up perhaps. He seems to have the skills, he needs to develop the head strategy to go along with it.

As fraught with errors as the match was, it was also a lot of fun. We got to see two guys ready to make a move up put on an entertaining display of tennis. It was close right down to the finish. Davydenko won the match, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4.

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If they ever erect a statue at Roland Garros of Mary Pierce, who after all is nearly French, and should she win the final on Saturday against Belgium’s Justine Henin-Hardenne, it should probably be styled after the classic painting of Venus stepping out of her bath in the giant seashell.

She gives new meaning to the term, a Pregnant Pause. Mary has many of them. For adjusting her hair, shaking her bracelets, gazing over the net at her opponents as if she were dreamily sizing them up for her next barbie. And they were the star pieces of meat.

It is probably one of the rare times on a tennis court when the opponent was intimidated by smiles rather than ferocious focused anger. Mary took her own sweet time, and she was very sweet about it. Very relaxed. This could have been a day at the spa for her, instead of on unforgiving red clay. She hammered Likhovetseva all over the court.

After the match Brad Gilbert sweetly chastised poor Likhovtseva for allowing herself to get whipped so soundly. He told the story of an early coach he had who admonished him, “When you lose the first set 6-1, you have to do something, anything. Give him junk! Give him moonballs! Otherwise it’s a blowout for sure.”

But she didn’t, she played the second set exactly as she had the first pretty much. And the score was the same, 6-1.

Justine Henin-Hardenne is not likely to be so sweet about Mary’s penchant for squandering time on court between points. Just go up and tell the referee ahead of the match your concerns about Mary staying within the time constraints. That way she will be clued into it from the start. So said Brad Gilbert, and also apparently Justine’s longtime coach, Carlos Rodriguez.

He is trying to get her to move forward more in her matches, to come into net more often. Justine says she feels a lot of tension from attempting that, she is not fully comfortable at the net yet. Fortunately, today she could rely on her greatest strengths, her backhand, her variety, and her intensity of play, to get her by a rather lackluster Petrova on one of her lesser days. She will worry about her net play some other day.

Petrova is a big power hitter, but not consistently enough that she can go for outright winners. She kept trying to do that through much of the first half of the match, overhitting balls or netting them. She needed to just keep the ball in play a bit before she went for her big shot.

By the time she started doing this, the match was nearly over. No surprises here.

So, the call please. I say Justine will give Mary’s bell a good ringing Saturday in the final, I would be very surprised if she even got a set off Justine.

As for the men’s semi-final, I say Federer will lay it down pretty good to Nadal in four sets.

Somewhere during the middle of the first set in the Venus Williams – Maria Sharapova semifinal slugfest at Wimbledon on Thursday, the camera alighted upon the person of father Richard Williams, seated in the rather dubiously named Friends’ Box. This was about the time it was apparent to all in the stadium that Venus Williams had come to play, with her “A” game in tow. Richard was watching his daughter’s match intently, with a certain fierce gleam in his eye. Given his uncannily accurate statements in the past about his two daughters’ fortunes, I wondered if he already knew that Venus would triumph today when all was said and done.

He was seated in front of Yuri Sharapov, Maria’s dad. Talk about a vicious seating arrangement. The Friends’ Box can probably tell a tale or two of opposing families who have sat there over the years.

At least the daughters get a net between them. The dads just have to make do. Do cups of coffee ever get spilled, accidentally of course? Do they acknowledge each other during the match? I know they do probably both before and after. But otherwise?

It was a wonderfully intense match, even with Venus running up a 5-1 lead in the second and final set. You never felt like it was over until it was over. Maria is not one to take anything lying down. She fought and shrieked her way on every point. These women not only go in for racket abuse. They go in for lung abuse. Don’t they need at least a soothing throat lozenge when it’s all over? I feel I drink more water that usual when I watch these two.

The decibel level of the shrieks must have been startling, especially to those staid Brits. Waves of murmuring ran through the crowd as the rallies were prolonged, and the girls upped the shriek level even more. Is it like a nail across the blackboard for them? I mean, the Brits aren’t rowdy and just plain loud like those crowds that frequent the U.S. Open, especially into those late night matches; they can’t be rude the way the French crowds are, either, they’ll openly applaud a non-French player if he defaults while he’s playing one of theirs. They certainly aren’t like the Italian crowds in the Foro Italico at their Open, who have no qualms about giving anyone and everyone on court the business, if it strikes their collective fancies. That is, when they’re not making out right there in the stands with the ladyfriends they’ve brought along. There’s a lot of that you used to see at the Italian, before the ESPN network dropped it and it migrated over to the Tennis Channel. Bjorn Borg tried out the Italian a few times and declared he would never play there again. He did marry one later on, but that’s another story. He got tired of fighting the crowd as well as his opponents. No wonder he did well at Wimbledon, his style fit in easily with the British reluctance to display.

But we’re the ones at home who should be shrieking, because the women today in both semifinals gave us all an intense run for our money. They were the epitome of women’s power tennis today. No fooling around here, it was a battle of the titans. Three of the four women are six feet and over. Mauresmo is the little shrimp in the group at 5’8″. Long rallies full of deep shots and crisp play at the net dominated. The mental chess going on in both matches was nearly as compelling as the physical presence each competitor showed.

And the serving. Especially Amelie’s. Green is her magic color after all. Maybe the Brits and the French should do a swap, Henman for Mauresmo. He has played well recently on clay, and grass shows off her wonderful game better on this surface than any other. But then I am an unrepentant devotee of the nearly extinct serve and volley game. Watching her on a number of occasions serve powerfully to Davenport and then rush the net, where she executed a neatly angled volley, is a thing of beauty. Why doesn’t she do this more often, I say to myself. Like, why doesn’t she just do it all the time? Like Patrick Rafter did? Just head for the net on every serve that’s big, and camp out there. Dare them to drive the ball back through your navel. Of course they’ll pass you, but Amelie’s a big girl now, she can take a few hits at the net. Her attitude was impeccable throughout, she didn’t seem to be down mentally, her body language was pretty good.

Of course, she still may lose the match tomorrow once play is resumed. But she can still take away a lot from it, I hope it’s more confidence in her ability to play more serve and volley. She is tall enough to serve consistently well, and she has a great motion with a lot of power behind it. She’s speedy enough to cover ground and get into the net, and when her serve is working well her volleying technique is good enough that she can put away nearly everything. Today, she saw how easy it was for her. Let this be a good lesson.

Her head may get in the way of this happening. She waits for the action to come to her too much of the time, she waits on the baseline and reacts rather than getting in there and taking charge at the net. If she drove the ball flatter, this would increase her chances, but she tends to loop the forehand too much for my taste and it detracts from her power. Another reason she should focus more on serve and volley.

Davenport’s demeanor went through a similar dynamic, she teetered on the brink of negativity at certain moments, and that has always been a bugaboo for her before. But she kept her cool, her focus, and fought it off. I expect Lindsay to come out and win it tomorrow. But Amelie has played magnificently. She hasn’t managed to wrangle a set out of Davenport in over five years of playing her. So today she has already surpassed herself.

I don’t know about the rest of the women’s draw, but these four players today definitely deserve equal pay with the men. Get ready guys, the day is coming when you’re just gonna have to cough up.

It is too bad that Lance Armstrong doesn’t play tennis, because he is the only American who seems routinely to do well in Paris.

It’s that time of year again in the tennis world, when the American players start moaning and groaning and trying to stay alive in the one Grand Slam event that they routinely play poorly at. This year is no exception. At least our boys didn’t keep us in suspense: they started dropping like flies almost immediately. Most of the nine entered male players were gone by the end of the second round.

Andre Agassi fell on the first day of play. An inflamed nerve in his back affected his movement on court. The guy could barely walk yet he chose to tough it out. Sure, he was up two sets to one, but plainly he was not long for this match. We don’t like it when players throw in the towel too soon, but personally I think Andre waited way too long. Why risk further aggravating the injury just to give the fans their money’s worth? Isn’t Andre Agassi the one guy in this sport who has consistently treated fans well over the years? He has put a great deal back into the game, so I wanted to say to him, “Andre, you’ve done enough, it’s ok guy, you can pull out of the match.” I hope Andre’s final hours are not going to be, in the words of Bud Collins, balanced on a hypodermic needle, painkillers and the like. That would be a sad way for a wonderful career to end.

As if this weren’t bad enough, we the viewers had to keep on seeing the TV ads for Genworth investments. Featuring, of course, Andre Agassi duking it out with his wife, Steffi Graf. I don’t know which bothered me more, the ads or his losing. Painful on both fronts. I wonder if Genworth was happy they bought the airtime.

Best Shot of the Tournament: Gaston (“Stick it in his ear”) Gaudio, who nearly ripped the Frenchman Benneteau’s ear off in a little tete-a-tete at the net. Benneteau tried to duck, he tried to get his racket up for protection, but missed. Gaudio did not. Shades of Ivan Lendl, crooned the commentators, who obviously found the first week’s play rather lacklustre; they were on the lookout already for blood, wherever it came from. Who says tennis is always civilized? Leave it to those Argentinians. Apparently they are not as cohesive as the Spaniards, in fact, they seem to hate each other’s guts. Gaudio and Coria have traded insults on and off the court, reportedly. Nalbandian is aloof from the whole pack of them. It’s every man for himself down in Argentina now, it seems. Good for the game, though.

The guys on top came through pretty much, Roger Federer has barely broken a sweat. Rafael Nadal never seems to STOP breaking into a sweat, the guy has a relentless energy on the court that must really be intimidating to his opponents. He often jogs to the chairs at the end of games. And he’s in the doubles too. He must be running around in an 18 year old’s body, since not many guys want to play both events in a tournament like this. It grinds you down too much playing on the clay. The French seem quite taken with Nadal, no doubt he is the sexy boy at this place. Already the Frenchmen are donning those white knickers in droves after watching Nadal on court.

Today was the hardest American loss to take, with Andy Roddick winning the first two sets against Jose Acasuso of Argentina, and then, well, basically blowing the match. Andy seems to have a lot of cramping of the brain, in the final game of the fifth set he was hitting moonballs back. Acasuso tied into one of them, and as he had done all afternoon, he crushed another shot up the line to end the match.

Brad Gilbert provided nonstop commentary on this match and you could hear him getting a little agitated as the match went on. As Andy’s previous coach, he probably hopes none of today’s misfirings end up on his doorstep. Andy is not aggressive enough, he kept saying, he’s giving up the baseline too much, he should be moving forward more…why does he keep setting up Acasuso on his backhand side? The guy was driving dozens of balls up the line on that side, and Andy did not make any adjustments for it. And how does a guy with such a booming serve manage to win only half his tiebreakers this year, and why is his overhead so poor?

Maybe the American women will salvage something for us yet. Lindsay Davenport dug herself out of a real hole on Wednesday. Her attitude this year about Roland Garros appears to be, “Well, I’ll just show up and hope for the best.” She played very little on clay leading up to this tournament, it is her weakest surface, but she’s getting thru the early rounds. So far she has been able to get away with that attitude. The American men have not. They usually arrive in Paris with very little clay court play under their belts. And each year, it shows. Sampras was the epitome of this attitude, he liked to talk about how he really wanted to win the French, but nearly every year that he competed he spent little time in Europe during the clay court season.

What remains to be said? Clay is not pretty.

The Mouse had more than his tail stepped on in the final of the Australian Open Sunday. The mouse being Lleyton Hewitt, who lost a four set final to Marat Safin that could best epitomize the phrase “power tennis.” The fourth set especially featured shot making that was not only spectacular to look at, but sounded like the cannons at the end of the 1812 overture.

Bang thud thumph whumpf. Lleyton gets pumped up watching the Rocky movies, or so we hear. And the boxing analogy would certainly hold up for this match. But as Patrick McEnroe commented, it was a mismatch. You had a heavyweight against a middleweight guy, and eventually we all know how this one will turn out.

The first set gave no indication of this. If anything, it could have turned into a blowout for Hewitt. He won it, 6-1. I was about to turn the TV off at this point, figuring Safin couldn’t get to his local Starbucks in time for a good jolt to start his day off right. The other sets would be just as bad.

But Safin kept his cool, and that, as it turned out, was the best shot in his repertoire. He clawed his way back into it, took advantage of Hewitt’s own moments of letdown, and then really started hammering the ball by the fourth set. Hewitt covered a lot of court, but today the balls flew past him even faster than his legs could keep up.

In a way I almost felt sorry for him and his smaller size. But only for a moment. Hewitt does not endear himself even to his own Aussie fans, who surely rooted for him as a representative of Australian sport, but clearly they have misgivings about their lad. He is not truly One of Us the way the Aussies of yore were, or even Patrick Rafter from more recent times. The guys in the locker room don’t like him one whit. He’s a brittle, testy little critter with an unfortunate habit of fist-pumping his way through matches when his opponents double fault or otherwise screw up. It’s ok when YOU make a brilliant shot, but it’s pretty embarrassing to watch him exult over other’s misfortune. No one likes that.

After a linesman called a Hewitt ball out, Hewitt got on his case then made a gesture at the linesman after the game was over signifying he should try opening his eyes, perhaps. The crowd did not seem to care for this, especially since Shot Spot showed the call was correct. Applause for Safin seemed to expand after that.

But the crowd would have done that anyway. The Aussies know and love their tennis, and they fully understood how thoroughly Safin was putting their guy through his paces.

Even the girlfriends were drawn into the fray, at least visually. The split screen showed the blonde lady friend of Hewitt alongside the dark-haired girlfriend of Safin, both looking understandably tense and worried.

But not enough to spoil their beauty, if the girls in question are really beautiful. My partner happened to glance at the screen at one of these moments of feminine loveliness. He saw the blonde, he saw the brunette. His pick should have clued me in to who would win the match finally.

“That’s Safin’s girlfriend?” he asks. “Wow, she should be tied to a chair and licked until she stops moving.”

Do the girls get to go out later and mud wrestle? Or, being that we are in Australia, do they try drinking one another under the table? One never hears about the girlfriends after a match is over. How do they fare, I wonder.

Perhaps the most significant stat was that Safin won 20 of 23 service points in the fourth set. He had only six double faults in the tournament. He went from two aces in the first set to nine by the third.

It was a formidable display of raw power. But contained still, because Safin kept his head when he was down. He hung in through his bad stretches until Hewitt went downhill a bit himself, then powered his way back into things. Safin didn’t hit the ball, he was crushing it.

It was an exhilarating match to watch, I would have not liked Safin to lose. After beating Federer in such a classic semifinal, he virtually HAD to win the final. It would have been a horrible letdown for everyone if he had gone out in three sets to Hewitt.

As it was, he has positioned himself right back in the heart of the men’s game. He is the only worthy challenger to Roger Federer.

Serena Williams resurrected herself in the women’s final against Lindsay Davenport the day before.

Marat Safin has undergone the same treatment and men’s tennis can only be a lot healthier for it.

Well, Roger Federer may join the ranks of the immortals someday. Just maybe not today, and maybe not alone. In a bruising 4-1/2 hour match, Marat Safin showed the tennis world how you win against the invincible Roger.

You simply outbludgeon him from the baseline, you hunt everything down he throws at you, you serve awesomely (Safin’s serve percentage was about 80% through most of the first set). You come to net at every chance. And you keep your cool when calls go against you, often wrongly, as they have repeatedly during this tournament.

Both players had fits of temper and a bit of the old racket tossing, how could you not in a match like this of such nerve-wracking intensity? But the nobility of the occasion kept both men honest and plugged into the task at hand. A gracious and warm shaking of hands was the appropriate ending. After all, they brought out absolutely the best there was in each other today.

Pete Sampras was quoted the other day as saying Roger is the best mover by far on the court. Marat Safin may be the next fastest, faster perhaps than Lleyton Hewitt. Roger would drive a ball into a corner where it seemed impossible for Marat to retrieve it, yet he did over and over. It hardly seems fair to possess so much power and yet move like he’s 4’6″, not 6’4″.

Mats Wilander commented that Federer needed to see more serve and volley thrown at him. He predicted that Marat Safin’s game could do that more effectively than Andre Agassi’s. Today, that happened.

A rather unusual thing also occurred with the men’s semifinals. The top four seeds actually made it through. Lleyton Hewitt added ten pounds of muscle so he could be the one to take it to Roger. Andre Agassi lost ten pounds so he could move to those fantastic deep corner shots of Roger’s. Andy Roddick fired one coach and hired another to find the magic formula he could use.

But at the end of the day – and hopefully a ton of more days to come – Marat Safin is the man who will prove to be Roger Federer’s major competitor over the years. Because he’s the only one of those top three who can stay consistently in Roger’s face.

Roger needs that, and the men’s game needs it too. Much as I personally am a fan of his and love to see him win, it would be sad to see the game become his own private shooting gallery. I don’t think Andy Roddick will be able to stay up with Federer. His game has added variety but not enough to consistently bother Roger. Ditto Lleyton Hewitt, in spite of the new muscles.

Today Safin was the Giant Killer, and I for one am feeling very pleased about the state of men’s tennis tonight.
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A Wake Up Call For the Williams Sisters

After watching Venus Williams lose her match to Australia’s Alicia Molik and Serena Williams claw her way back from losing the first set in her win over Maria Sharapova, it occurs to me that you can’t win a women’s Grand Slam event now on a part-time tennis schedule.

It used to be you could. Up until about a year or so ago, the women’s field was not that strong and only a few women dominated the game. Watching much of women’s tennis is really pretty boring I think, because the first week is usually about the top two or three women lording it over the rest. Absolute blowouts really, you can’t even call them matches.

Roger Federer likes to say that a tournament doesn’t begin for him until the second week. Well, with women’s tennis, that happens all the time. Nothing begins in women’s tennis until about the quarterfinals.

How galling that must be for the other women. The Williams sisters could go off and pursue their outside interests and still play the Slams and win them.

But now the rest of the field has caught up to them in a major way and the sisters may have to adjust. Everyone is gymning themselves into oblivion, pumping iron, training longer. Chubby little girls are now morphing into trim Amazons.

ESPN announcer Mary Carillo thinks the Williams sisters can dominate again if they improve their serves to where they once were. But to do that they need to play more tournaments. And to play more tournaments they need to rededicate themselves to the game, full-time.

Venus and Serena were tossing in serves that seemed consistent enough, but they were about three-quarters the speed of what they needed to be. Their opponents are no longer intimidated.

Alicia Molik can now join those ranks of the Unintimidated. She’s a big, powerful blond of Polish descent with a formidable serve, a huge ground game based around her big forehand, and a ballsy kind of attitude that can help her hang in through the tough patches of a match. She took it to Venus Williams. Venus probably looked over the net and saw a game oddly reflective of what her own once was.

Fashion design is all well and good but Venus can pursue that when she’s retired. Right now she needs to remember that an athlete’s life is a fragile, short-lived thing and grab onto it with both hands. One wonders if her enthusiasm is quite there fully.

With Serena the enthusiasm is still there, judging by the leaps of joy she performed after she beat Sharapova in an excellent 3-set match. For her, this was a final of sorts, a juicy little tidbit of revenge on Sharapova who won the year-end championship in November that Serena should have won.

Hopefully their seasons will see them staying healthy. That’s the first step for the Williams sisters. The next is playing, playing and then more playing.