The clay court minor league season started up in Houston and a few unexpected players will meet in the final. Oh, and someone got married.<\/b><\/p>\n
Let\u2019s warm up for the clay court season by going to a minor league event in Houston. Okay, I\u2019m being a bit obnoxious but how else can you describe an ATP event where John Isner<\/b>, the very tall epitome of hard serving hard court tennis, makes it to the quarterfinals?<\/p>\n
The clay in Houston is red this year not green but it\u2019s not the Tuileries Gardens red clay. Those beautiful gardens next to the Louvre used to be a red clay quarry for tiles long ago – hence tuile, the French word for tile. According to a reader who left a comment on Lexa\u2019s excellent post<\/a> about the vagaries of clay court tennis earlier this week, the Houston clay is a mixture of red stone and brick dust.<\/p>\n I\u2019m assuming this means that it\u2019s faster than the green court and slower than the true red court, but it\u2019s hard to tell because there are few true clay courts players here to test it out with their high bouncing kickers. Most everyone trots out their hard court game as if we were still back in Indian Wells. Take Wayne Odesnik<\/b>.<\/p>\n Odesnik got to the third round of the French Open last year and he beat Guillermo Canas<\/b> in three straight tiebreakers along the way so he\u2019s one of the better U.S. clay courters. Today he played Bjorn Phau<\/b> in the semifinals to try and get to his first ATP final. First of all, the court doesn\u2019t look like a demolition derby with skid marks left and right. It looks well-groomed and Odesnik almost fell over on a forehand running passing shot \u2013 a winner by the way \u2013 because he expected his lead foot to land and grab. Instead, Odesnik\u2019s body was ready to turn back to the middle of the court but his feet were still moving towards the stands.<\/p>\n You\u2019re supposed to slide in to those shots Wayne. It worked out, though, because Phau doesn\u2019t have much firepower \u2013 he\u2019s a small guy who plays his size. He\u2019 scrappy, though, and he\u2019s back up to number 77 after disappearing for a few years. Which reminds me. I was reading an article in Bill Simons\u2019 excellent publication Inside Tennis<\/a> when I realized that I hadn\u2019t seen Donald Young<\/b> lately. It seems he\u2019s all the way down to number 161 and having trouble getting out of qualifiers. I feel for him.<\/p>\n Roger Federer<\/b> married Mirka Vavrinec<\/b> is his hometown of Basel, Switzerland today. Just thought I\u2019d throw that in here. He\u2019ll spend his honeymoon taking a wild card in Monte Carlo. For years Roger has played the minimum number of events possible but now he\u2019s scrambling a bit to get some consistency in his game. Thus the last minute wild card.<\/p>\n Back to Houston.<\/p>\n Lleyton Hewitt<\/b> took on Evegeny Korolev<\/b> in the other semifinal. Hewitt reminds of Andy Roddick<\/b>. They\u2019re both stiffs. Just kidding. What I mean is that they both have stiff takebacks on their two-handed backhands because they extend their arms as you can see below:<\/p>\n