Well I don’t know if we can call Rafael Nadal the pigeon of James Blake, but it would appear that a few pin feathers are growing in. Blake is the only man, besides Thomas Berdych, to beat Nadal three times in a row. Berdych actually lost their very first meeting, but the last three were spread out over two years. Blake did it all this year.

And he did it again Tuesday in Shanghai, in straight sets. It was rock’em-sock’em no holds barred blistering fantastic tennis, and I was so thrilled to see Blake fired up. He loves playing this guy. If you were a Yank, you were probably leaping around the room too, yelling with glee. In fact Berdych was there watching as an alternate along with Mario Ancic, both of whom had practiced this week with Blake. Roger Federer should have been watching this match too, if he wasn’t, because Blake laid it all out there: how to play and beat Nadal. Don’t you think those guys are taking this all in.

Andy Roddick played at the same level in his match against Roger Federer today. It took them three sets and even though Roddick went down in defeat, it was the best match he’s played this year.

The difference was that Blake managed to close the deal in the second set tie break, Roddick let it slip away. But anyone who thinks American men’s tennis is on life support should get a glimpse of these two matches on tape. They are the best samples of kick ass American men’s tennis on display this year.

Still, there are elements to be critical of. Andy Roddick played fearlessly and well to get into the doorway, but once there he got a little tight. Usually what happens is the first serve goes off. If it’s a bad case, then the stiffening spreads into a brain cramp, and he does something improbable on court, or ends up being out of position.

Meantime, on the other side of the net, Federer is battening down the hatches and tightening everything up in his game. He must have been sweating a lot in this match, and they say Roger doesn’t ever sweat. But what’s that fine sheen on your forehead, guy? Did he have a little deja vu back to that moment when he was serving for the Rome final against Nadal? It was a match point I believe. And he let down that little bit. Nadal needed no more and went on to win.

That’s where Andy Roddick found himself today, up several mini-breaks and serving for it all in the second set tie-break. Andy blinked, and Roger wiggled. He probably hoped that Roddick would start to go away quickly in the third, like so many of his opponents. But Roddick did not pull a Nalbandian and pack his bags after winning the first set, then losing the second, and just vanishing in the third. Even after Federer got the one break in the third game Roddick still tried to hang in. And then it was over at 6-4. Still, there is a certain air of gloom over the proceedings whenever Federer is tied with you and now it’s the third set.

We can count on one hand the times a player has pushed Rafael Nadal around on a court this year. Blake laid out a textbook case of how you can beat Rafa, and he followed it with absolute relentlessness. Serve well, follow it up by taking away the net, or if not the net then get in to pick off the floaters, blast the Spaniard well behind the baseline with your huge forehands and keep him there, and if he wants to play backhand games with you, why, simply nail that great, flat screaming backhand up the line. Nadal’s worst nightmare this season was the number of Blake backhands that flew past him. The other thing you need to beat him is to return return return.

The first set saw break chances for both players. In Game 3 of the first set Blake fended off three break points on his serve. In Game 7 Blake got down again, and this time Nadal broke him for 4-3. Blake came roaring back, putting Nadal under attack again at love-40. Nadal fought him off for deuce, then James uncorked one of his stellar backhands up the line. This was the bread and butter shot of the day. Blake breaks back in the next game, and the score is 4-all. He holds his serve routinely for 5-4, then starts pressuring Nadal again, going up 30-40 on Nadal’s serve and charging the net. Nadal dumps a shot in the net and Blake has the first set, 6-4.

But does he have the match? My stomach churns at this point usually for our lad, because here is where the mental letdowns creep in. Suddenly in the second set, Nadal is up 4-0. I was watching Blake very carefully in these games, to see if I could decipher why the air is running out of his sails. You could almost measure a certain drop in his intensity. For Nadal, that’s as good as blood in the water.

No no no, I’m praying silently, as the errors start to flow off James’ racquet. Seven of them during this opening second set stretch. Quickly the games flit by, and we have 4-0. This is a moment we recognize too, where Nadal gets his teeth into a match, takes the middle set, and crushes you in the third. Like Federer. But lo and behold, Blake puts the plug in, he gathers himself together, and he comes back. Time for another great backhand screamer up the line.

The tie break saw no diminution in Blake’s aggressive play. Unlike Roddick, Blake tromped on the gas pedal. He started with an ace, then hit a nifty inside-out forehand winner off Nadal’s serve for 2-0. He works over Nadal’s backhand for 3-0. On his serve Blake got a weak return from Nadal for 4-0. Then Blake decided to be daring and he served a second serve into Nadal’s forehand, and it came back right up the middle. Blake angled it into a corner and moved forward, putting away the volley for 5-0. Nadal didn’t help his cause by double-faulting, and now it was match point. Blake finished Nadal with a great hard forehand up the line.

Whew, it’s exhausting just writing about it. We wonder what the lads will serve up next. I heard a rumor some other guys were playing here too, but ESPN2 kindly keeps out the riffraff for us.

If you are a person of the French persuasion who happens to follow tennis with une grande passion, this past week in Paris was a bitter disappointment for you to swallow. All of the pullouts before the event started gutted the field leaving a dismal pall over the locals. Then the final on Sunday yielded a real journeymen’s nightmare from hell in the shapes of Nikolay Davydenko and Dominik Hrbaty. A far cry from the Roger Nadal blockbuster they were dreaming of.

Hell, Paris ended up being on a par with the events in places like Hamburg and Cincinnati, where flocks of players pulled out for various physical complaints, but mostly because of poor tournament scheduling. Officials will complain mightily, as have others before them this year, about the length of the season, the injuries and the withdrawals. We will hear more ominous rumblings about “repercussions” for stuff like this, but in the end it is just more yakkety-yak from officialdom. Nobody will step up and make changes to avoid over-scheduling or poor scheduling of events. Nobody wants to give up their tournament whether it’s a big deal tournament or a little penny-ante affair.

The only consistent thing I saw from tennis officialdom this season were efforts by the WTA to make life miserable for players such as Lindsay Davenport, who was denied several wild card entries to events she should have been playing in, was healthy enough to play in, but somehow wasn’t playing in.

I don’t hold out much hope for the men getting their act together either.

For a guy like Sunday’s winner Davydenko, the season is probably never long enough. He’s the only one who seems to thrive on playing each and every week. Lucky for him, his body at 5’10” and 154 pounds is lithe and light enough that he stays pretty free of injuries. He probably doesn’t even get colds. Earlier in the year when he started winning consistently, I wondered if he was high in the rankings just because he was so healthy and he played so much. He usually seemed to be one of the last guys standing. It doesn’t matter if you are really any good or not, you find ways to get through the draws and boost your ranking.

After watching him move through the Paris draw, I think we have to give this invisible man of tennis closer scrutiny. He deserves it now. The colors of his game are emerging. And no, Martha, they aren’t all grey. Well, he could do with a new wardrobe. His clothing looks like he pinched it from someone on the way to the court. No metrosexual snazzy threads on this lean frame.

Here are some of my impressions of the balding one, who I started to think was related in another life to his taller shadow on tour, Mr. Ljubicic. Both of them have been accused of being too mundane to be recognized as stars with games that lacked excitement even as they were remarkably steady. Both of them turned in solid years which should lay that one to rest once and for all.

Davydenko has very compact and efficient strokes like the man’s personality itself. Calm and measured. He is tall enough but not towering. His serve has some nice laser-like pace on it but it is by no means overpowering. He is more about placement. His ground strokes are very solid off both sides, but you can’t say he has a big kill shot, or even a big weapon.

Yet he gets the job done. He plays with a certain intelligent persistence. There is no drama on court with him, no tantrums. His eyes may open wide, his lips part a bit, a slight shake of the head when he miss-hits a shot. That’s all. Then he’s back to work.

And work is what Nikolay Davydenko thrives on. He treats tennis as a business. As mostly a business. His brother Eduard who coaches and travels with him everywhere says his brother plays a lot to pad his bank account. No bones made there, thank you. Greed is good.

Maybe this is why America is not producing the same level of tennis champions as we used to. The incentive may not be there. Our kids have so many other sports to play that are more popular and don’t require all the years of training tennis requires. They can do other sports more easily and make more money and get that limelight. Our personalities seem to be geared to quick fixes, we want it now and we want it easy. Who in blazes wants to spend time developing a serve and volley game, assuming you feel as I do that there is still a place for it in today’s game? That takes time and no one wants to do it anymore. We may hard-pressed to find players who want to play, period.

The Russians have that hunger big time. The men and the women. Yevgeny Kafelnikov was the same way, he played everything lying around from Australia to Toronto. You saw a ton of him in doubles, too. He played so much he invested in his own private plane. You could say Marat Safin is more the artiste type, and God knows we all love to watch them at work, but we’ve all grown nearly as bald as Davydenko watching Safin over the years. He’s enough to make a girl tear her hair out by the roots. Davydenko is the nice, steady type. In tennis as in life, mothers everywhere probably tell their daughters to land a guy like that. Stay away from the Safins.

Davydenko goes down a little easier now and I am beginning to like and really admire his game. He makes the most of what he has. His head adjusts well to any situation. He goes for his chances. Against Hrbaty on Sunday, he continually held sway at the baseline and pushed his man around. He takes the ball very early and he creates a lot of angles. He ran Hrbaty every which way and basically smothered him from the outset with his steady serving, returning and sharp angled shots. He can change the direction of balls and swat them up the line for winners. And he obviously loves being in finals, having won ten in his career and lost only three. The man knows when to smell the money.

Hrbaty got blown away, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, which was a bit surprising to me, even though Davydenko played really well the entire week. These two had an epic five setter at the Australian Open this year, with Hrbaty two sets up before the Russian came back to win. They can both be very steady in very long rallies. But not in Paris. The shift differential for Davydenko was +20 winners to errors, which is remarkably high.

For Hrbaty, it was the first Masters Series final in his career. He had an off and on year, slowly getting better as the year went on. For Davydenko, it is a richly deserved first Masters Series win. He’s been beating his head against it through 34 matches and finally he gets his first shield. His 67 match wins is the second best on tour this season, behind you know who at 87.

Some may call it the scraps left from Roger Nadal pulling out. If Davydenko had not had such a good year, I might be saying that too. But he has been knocking at our doors for a while now and it’s high time we welcomed in the lean and hungry one. He is at a career high Number 3 ranking and it feels very appropriate. Do you think he expects to do well in Shanghai or what?

Some of us may have Paris, the rest of us will be down to the scrapings of Paris as we rummage around in the nether regions of the draw, trying to round up a few good men for our Fantasy Tennis league that we have not used up yet. Or squandered, if you prefer.

This week we are shuffling through more unknown quantities than usual because most of the Top Ten has already pulled out. Gone are Ljubicic, Roddick, Baghdatis, Nalbandian, Nadal. Roger Federer was the last to decide he would bail. He apologized profusely. He’s that kind of guy. So did Nadal. So much for Paris, Humphrey. This week they couldn’t give her away. I would have thought Madrid last week would see a few withdrawals, not Paris. Wouldn’t you rather play in the latter than the former? I would, but then I’m one of those disgusting Californians who prefers French over California wines, so sue me.

Now we are getting acquainted with the likes of Robin Soderling, Stanislas Wawrinka and Marc Gicquel. What, you say bells of recognition aren’t ringing in your head yet? Actually there is no reason they couldn’t become familiar names in tennis. Soderling has steadily been showing up in the middle rounds of events lately, Gicquel made it to his first final last week even though he lost, and Wawrinka seems inspired lately by the play of his co-Swiss Mr. Federer. Hell, I even went for Bjorn Phau last week. Mostly because I hoped anyone named Bjorn in the world of tennis would be a good luck charm. He’s not Swedish, though, he’s German. On second thought, I decided to insert Henman in his place but missed the deadline. Bjorn it had to be. Until he exited of course, in the very first round.

Necessity therefore moved into the Fantasy selection process this week. I found I had only three somewhat big names I could still pick: Djokovic, Murray and Gasquet. I picked them as my main courses. Around them are a few tasty little appetizer sorts, namely Grosjean, Almagro, Mirnyi, Verdasco and Safin. As of Monday, Mirnyi and Verdasco were already gone. Almagro barely survived a squeaker with Bjorkman. (Today, Tuesday, Almagro had to retire from his match with Tursunov).

There are a good handful of Frenchmen in the draw but Gasquet is the only one I feel will get further along, and I would not necessarily bet my all on him. He’s in that corner of the draw where Wawrinka and Gicquel are playing; they face each other in the opening round. It will be interesting to see if Gicquel is still fired up after his success last week – and also whether he has enough stamina to make his way through the Paris draw. It could go either way. What the lesser ranked guys may possess in desire they may lack in stamina, simply because they usually aren’t around very long in most draws. (A close match, in which Wawrinka prevailed).

Some good rounds to watch for would be Gasquet facing Safin (I am still keen on Safin’s chances, as I question Gasquet’s consistency from week to week); Blake should get by Haas if they meet in the Round of 16; Djokovic (who can beat Robredo I think) will probably face Nieminen and beat him; Ginepri could face Berdych, assuming he can get by Ferrer and I think he can. (Ginepri beat Ferrer today).

The ATP Tour site apparently decided to add the Paris tournament to their online viewing package, so those of you without The Tennis Channel can probably see the Gonzalez-Ancic match this week. It will be a good one. I’ll get up at the crack of dawn for that one.

Fernando Gonzalez could have a shot at winning this tournament. He is probably salivating at the thought of making it into a final where the opponent won’t be named Roger, whom he has lost to in the last two weeks in finals at both Basel and Madrid, or Ljubicic, who beat him in the final in Vienna the week before that. Gonzalez has won 7 titles in his career, but never a Masters Series event. His appearance in three Masters finals in a row would suggest it’s high time he took home the trophy. He shows up week after week and he plays hard. Does he have enough energy to carry on through Paris? I hope so, the man has some heart.

A darker horse to pick to win all the marbles would be Safin. In fact, right now a Safin-Gonzalez final would be something to look forward to. Gonzalez has the edge in their duels, especially this year, having beaten the big Russian on all three surfaces. Just because Roger and Rafa aren’t here does not mean we are suffering a lack of good match-ups. The week may turn out to be more competitive than we think, as the players scramble around trying to seize the advantage in this event without the big names. Here’s your chance, guys, grab it!

Seems like only yesterday when my co-writer Nina Rota and I were bubbling happily about the prospect of another Roger Nadal final in Madrid. After all, I reminded her, Roger had “only” Nalbandian to climb over while Rafa could face either Djokovic or Gonzalez once he got by Tomas Berdych. How hard could that be, said I, tra la la la. Harder than we think, said Mr. Berdych, who had other ideas in mind and proceeded to take down the Number Two seed Nadal in straight sets.

Not only did Berdych beat Nadal with a game as powerful from the baseline as his own, Berdych managed to tweak Nadal a bit in the personality department. Too bad for Nadal that Berdych did not make the finger to the lips gesture during the match, instead of over the hand-shake at the end; it might have fired Nadal up. As it was, he could only sullenly call Berdych a “bad boy” at the end for his silencing gesture.

I’m waiting for the day when more players are going to complain about all the time Nadal takes between points. Butt picking, line cleaning and taking his own sweet time is something one could legitimately rant about. Instead Berdych went after the crowd. Maybe Berdych is better suited to team sports; he would rather have hundreds of people on his case instead of just one opponent.

I did not have a problem with Berdych’s gesture. It’s just that he should be prepared for the heat that comes with a gesture like that. The crowd gave him some flame. So far Berdych doesn’t seem able to cash in that anger and turn it back into his game the way McEnroe did. He’s at the stage now where it just festers inside him and gets in the way of his winning matches.

Too bad, because the guy has a great-looking game and we have been waiting on his “arrival” for a while now. As Nina Rota pointed out in her piece, though, he wins a big match then slips back several notches. Consistency is still a stretch for Berdych. Mentally he is suspect; the guy has the look of a brooder about him. A choir boy in search of the proper choir for his talent to shine forth in. But he showed some real smooth power in his strokes against Nadal and his footwork is really nice for a guy who is nearly 6’6″. Smooth quick little steps that seem effortless. No wonder he’s touted as a more powerful version of Roger Federer. Now if only his head could catch up. Berdych became the 8th man to beat Nadal this year and the only one to have done it three times.

I felt absolutely crestfallen. Why can’t the second best player in the world get into more finals so he can give battle to the number one player? The person who was most disappointed, after me, was probably Federer himself. Just when he was starting to learn, at Wimbledon, how to break down Nadal’s game and give him a fit or two. Roger was probably eager as can be to lay further hands upon Nadal.

But Nadal has not materialized in a semi-final since Wimbledon. If this keeps up we may start to think, “Hhmmm, did that Federer win at Wimbledon get inside Rafa’s head a bit?” Does he want to see more Fed? Or would he rather lose to a motley crew like Moya, Berdych, Joachim Johansson, Youzhny, Ferrero, Blake and Clement before he gets to Federer? I am beginning to wonder.

Once again, dear readers, we get the typical Federer final which seems to occur a lot these days when the opponent is not named Nadal. Sunday the victim was Gonzalez, who has not played badly at all this year and may be our pick for the most improved player. But on this day Gonzo saw all his good efforts in the first set go for naught. He fell into the Federer threshing machine and the pattern goes like this: we race through the first set, both players are showing their stuff, it’s neck and neck until….well, usually it happens in a heartbeat.

In Gonzo’s case, it was a sitting forehand that he could not direct up the line for a winner. This would have given him game point at 5-6 in the first set. He wiggled out of that momentarily but a few points later Gonzalez dug more trouble for himself by attempting a backhand dropshot that didn’t drop enough, and Roger nailed it up the line for a winner. Then Roger got a second serve and put away an overhead for the only break and the set is his, 7-5.

After that, you see the air almost literally rush out of Federer’s opponents. Their spirit is crushed, the train now leaves the station and they may as well kiss the match goodbye. Gonzo seemed ready to battle on early in the second set, or maybe it was just his death throes. In any event, he snagged only one game in the second set before getting the bagel in the third.

For Gonzalez it was still a pretty decent day, even though his losing streak to the Fed now goes to 0 and 7. This was his first Masters Series final and it was about time, guy. He threw his all at Federer in the first set; the problem was doing it for five. The man has come a long way this year. He has lost weight but he could still lose a bit more. He has worked hard to tone down the brute force that seemed to come with every shot and he is picking up touch, which he showed on a number of forays to the net and in his use of drop shots. He has learned to make adjustments and hopefully now it will begin to pay off. See you in Shanghai, Gonzo.

As for Federer, he left the field in his dust. Sigh. Maybe Shanghai will provide us with that Roger-Rafa final we have been craving. But don’t count your chickens like I did. As the fall season wears on, it is clear now there is only one constant heart beating in the men’s game and it’s the man from Switzerland.

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If you are deprived of the Tennis Channel because your cable provider does not provide it, or your satellite people can’t set up at your apartment or house, then the ATP Tour site has a nifty little viewing program you may want to check out. For about eight bucks a day you could have signed up to see the Madrid matches on your computer screen. No, really, it’s not as bad as you think. The worst part is getting up real early out here on the west coast to catch it live from overseas.

The viewing is not as clear as on TV, but it’s better than you think. Certainly better than I thought. I wasn’t sure how I would like sitting upright for hours at a desk viewing it. I am a tennis slut, and this week I really needed a good fix of something, so I was happy to try the system out. Periodically you have to refresh your screen to keep it large but not having commercials is really nice. And having Brit commentators is nice too because they have a long tradition of being laconic on the air. Much as I often love the non-stop commentary of Pat and Cliff and Mary and John and Jim, sometimes I just wish….they’d shut up already. Please.

See also:
2006 Madrid Quarterfinals: Is Berdych Better Than Nadal?

For those followers of tennis who think the sport is way too prissy about players taking injury timeouts when there may be no real injury, or bathroom breaks when the only intention is not to pee but to confound your opponent, a current story from the World Chess Championships may be your cup of tea.

It seems a Russian and Bulgarian were dueling for the title in chess, but the match got bogged down when the Russian player was locked out of his private bathroom. He was suspected of getting up to something nefarious inside that bathroom. Did he whip out the Cliff version of chess crib notes? Does he sip from some magical elixir? We’ll never know, because it is the one area where security cameras do not go at the championships apparently. The Russian maintains he drinks lots of water and therefore has to pee a lot. Besides, he likes to PACE.

Oh well, that’s different! Pacing, why didn’t you say so in the first place? The Russian likes to use his private rest area for that, but it is small, so he added his bathroom area to his daily rounds. Once it was locked, he fomented mightily. The decision to close his holy of holies showed “severe bias” against his person. “My dignity does not allow me to stand this situation.”

Nor should it, we suppose. Can we eagerly await the day when Sharapova will utter such a line on her way into the locker room? There is so much gamesmanship now in tennis that it probably won’t be long until this situation occurs and someone gets locked out.

When Roger Federer gave us his week of ATP blogging recently from Japan, he sounded absolutely smitten by those state of the art bathrooms they have in Japan. Add technology to the usual nefarious player shennanigans and and we could be in for a whole new wave in tennis. Bathroom Strategies. Now players could soon ponder not only when to use their next drop shot, or inside out forehand, but what new ruses they can cook up on their way into the can. Stay tuned.

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We know we are in a slow time of year for tennis when we start exploring odd stories like the preceding. The year end championships take place in November, but around them are bits and pieces of a lot of little stuff in tennis. Last week I should have gotten delivery of my blessed Dish Network to my humble abode, but it was not to be. I am on the first floor, and my landlord will not allow any holes, nails, screws or whatnots on his property. Even though he hands out a consent form for provider and tenant to sign, it is pretty much irrelevant. If I were on the second floor, my balcony railing would suffice as a base. But I am not, alas. So, still no Tennis Channel.

We are left to wonder whether Roger is going to pop the marriage question anytime soon to Mirka. That’s what is happening in tennis this week, folks. Personally, I think Roger should stay focused on tennis. Marriage is not what is happening these days . My partner and I have lived in sin for over fifteen years. I like being able to tell people that. Their eyes usually light up in happiness, because everyone remembers how good sin was before marriage came along. Roger should get on that bandwagon too if he knows what’s good for him. Besides, with the loot he makes the sin should be flowing freely. Next topic, please.

Rafael Nadal took it on the chin in Stockholm this week at the hands of big-serving Joachim Johansson, back on the tour after a long injury time-out. Perhaps a surprise, perhaps not. Johansson could serve anybody off the court when his serve is working. Somehow the thought of Nadal playing indoors in such a wintry place does not speak well for his chances, in spite of him donning blue and gold colors for the host country. Still, a Blake-Nadal final would have been a lovely thing. Instead it was Blake and Nieminen. (Blake won that final).

Also trying to make amends this week was American cyclist Floyd Landis, who decided he would get a jump on his case coming up in January regarding his alleged use of illegal testosterone in the Tour de France by posting his case on his website. We love you Floyd, and we certainly like your hair. But we have heard this all before and just because you hauled out Powerpoint to make your case does not really change the central facts. You had high levels of testosterone in your system and a further test showed they didn’t get there by themselves. Clearly something synthetic arrived in your system and you’ve offered various defenses/excuses as to how it could have gotten there. I especially approved of the whiskey defense, but have you thought of osmosis? Frankly I think blaming the lab for mishandling the samples is getting to be like all those criminal cases since O.J., where defense lawyers claim the cops planted the damning evidence your lying eyes are looking at now. It is getting old and tired.

Can’t anybody in cycling just back down for once and fess up to doping? Besides Frankie Andreu? At this rate people will be so turned off no one will probably ever want to ride a bicycle again.

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Walt Landers was only 53 years old when he passed recently from a brain tumor. Walt was a long-time trainer and masseur with the ATP, the guy who handled bodies on a regular basis trying to get them in shape for the rigors of the tour. It was a rather sudden end to a solid career. Ivan Ljubicic, the newly elected Players Council President, wore a black armband in his memory during a match in Vienna this past week. Another good guy gone.

See also:
A Demi-Gods Demise
Dick Pound and WADA Reach Altitude