I was expecting Andy Murray to turn up this week at the Countrywide Classic here in Los Angeles, the second leg of the men’s side of the US Open Series. I also expected Brad Gilbert, reportedly Murray’s new coach, to put in an appearance. Then I read that Murray sat out his Davis Cup singles match against Israel with a brace on his neck and I quickly removed him from my fantasy team. Sure enough, Murray pulled out of this week’s tournament and Gilbert still hasn’t signed the contract because the deal involves running Britain’s juniors program and the two sides haven’t come to an agreement about how much time Gilbert will spend in England.

Who knews that something even better was in store for the US tennis world? Andy Roddick held a news conference in the small interview room at the Countrywide late this afternoon to introduce his new coach, Jimmy Connors. It was so crowded that some photographers never managed to squeeze into the room.

Roddick said he called Connors after the French Open and met with him at Wimbledon. Roddick and Connors decided to work together for four or five days in Santa Barbara before the Indianapolis tournament and see if they clicked. How civil is that? No long drawn out negotiations with every step appearing in the news as there has been with the Gilbert contract, just a short trial period.

Roddick made it to the final in Indianapolis and lost a close three set match to James Blake. After the match he said he had his confidence back. I had planned to ask him where he found it but now the answer is clear. He has a coach who believes in him. “It means a lot when someone who’s won as many tennis championships as Jimmy says, ‘You know what, I believe in you and I think you can really do some great things,'” he said.

I hadn’t really been paying attention to the talk about Connors coaching Roddick because Connors doesn’t seem like the coaching type. He’s not a friendly talkative guy like Gilbert, Connors is a recluse in comparison to other former tennis players, and he’s not soft-spoken like Dean Goldfine, Connors can be prickly and downright crass. Gilbert and Goldfine are former coaches of Roddick. But Connors might have something in common with Roddick’s current coach – his brother John.

Not as a brotherly figure but as a father figure. It’s not just that Connors is old enough to be Roddick’s father or that he kept calling him kid during the press conference, it’s that he reminded me of his mother. Gloria Connors taught Jimmy the game and she was the original tennis mother. She was Jimmy’s biggest fan and cheerleader. And that’s what Connors sounded like today, a cheerleader for Roddick. “People are begging to root for this guy,” he said of his new charge.

Connors hopes to give Roddick “a little bit of what made me what I was” and a big part of that was his fighting spirit, but what can he do about Roddick’s game? Thankfully he’s convinced Roddick to move forward on the return of serve. Gilbert originally moved Roddick further back because the return is a weak part of his game but neither of Roddick’s subsequent coaches has been able to coax him forward.

This is a hopeful start but we’ll see if Connors can get Roddick to a place where he can compete with today’s all court players. Murray, for one, has beaten him twice this year.

When a journalist asked Connors about instant replay he smiled and said, “That would have taken away a lot of my thing.” Which immediately brings to mind the time that Connors ran to his opponent’s side of the court and erased a ball mark before the umpire could come out and correct it. I assume Roddick won’t learn that kind of behavior from Connors.

Xavier Malisse has no such problem with instant replay. He’s become an expert at it. He used his first challenge in the fourth game of his first round match against Andre Agassi. Malisse had hit a backhand down the line that was called out. Everyone on my side of the court stood up, turned around and looked at the screen to see if the challenge would be upheld. It’s a cool thing, the challenge, because the crowd gets into it. Malisse won that challenge and broke Agassi in the game.

He gave the break back in the next game but he had something better up his sleeve. The set went to a tiebreaker and Malisse hit a shot down the line that went out and made the score 7-4 giving the set to Agassi. Agassi started to walk off the court but Malisse challenged the call. And won. A 7-4 score was now 5-6.

The tiebreak went back and forth, 7-7, 8-7, 8-8, until Agassi got his fourth set point at 11-10 and finally won the set on a Malisse error.

Malisse is a strange guy. He’s quick to anger and is known for losing his temper but his emotions go in one direction only. You don’t see him punch his fist and celebrate a good shot. There was a smile, as you can see here, after he won a challenge but that’s about it. And so it was a quiet second set as Malisse went down without a peep to lose the match 7-6(10), 6-0.

Malisse had lost the first set after winning a challenge and holding two set points. It must have killed him because all the energy drained out of his game in the second set. Maybe Malisse is content to be in the top twenty or thirty or maybe he doesn’t know how to channel his formidable emotions to help him win.

Malisse’s ATP profile doesn’t mention a coach. Perhaps he should call John McEnroe and see if he’d be interested in a coaching job. He could tell Malisse a thing or two about channeling emotions. It would be just like old times. Connors and McEnroe on the tour again.