In an epic battle of good vs. evil, old vs. young, cougar vs. kitten, more pathetic vs. most pathetic, there was no clear cut winner.  I guess we, the collective TV audience, has finally won now that NBC’s Age of Love is over.  Although I kind of feel like I did after I beat a scrub, whom I should’ve double bageled, 7-5 in the third set.  As in, yeah I’m glad the match is over and I won, but I need to take a long, hard look in the mirror before I take the court again.  Low and behold, the show is not entirely over, because Mark Philippoussis will marry Amanda Salinas (a 25 year old kitten- shocking, I know) on national television sometime later this fall (this marriage part is according to wikipedia, so take it for what it’s worth).  NBC certainly can’t be considered a winner, the show had low ratings until last night for the finale; but it still finished 3rd behind Hell’s Kitchen and repeats of Two and Half Men & Rules of Engagement.  I guess for right now we can consider Mark and his future wife a winner as well, but I’ll place the over-under for this marriage at 3 years, and take the under. (more…)

I’m thanking Mr. Isner for many different reasons.  First and foremost, he provided energy and excitement for a tournament that would have been quite lackluster without him.  Secondly, thank you for supporting my blog from last week regarding U.S. Men’s tennis.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with his story, I’ll provide you with a short recap.  John recently graduated from University of Georgia with a plethora of tennis accolades.  At the beginning of the summer, John was ranked #839.  Then he won a future level event, and then a challenger a couple of weeks later raising his ranking to the mid 400’s.  Then, Fernando Gonzalez pulled out of the Legg Mason, opening up a wild card spot that was granted to John.  To say that John took full advantage of this wild card would be the understatement of the century (besides saying that Kevin Garnett was a decent pickup for the Celtics, but as always, I digress). (more…)

I’m on a mini vacation, and there is not too much to report in the way of tennis news, so I’m going to keep this brief to appease my family. Unfortunately the only major story out there is a negative one. A British online gambling company, Betfair, in launching an investigation into why over ten times the typical amount was gambled (according to sources, around 7 million dollars) on a match between Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Arguello. Ten times a normal amount is enough to raise some eyebrows, and considering most of that 7 million was bet on Arguello to win, even though he is ranked 83 spots below Davydenko, tennis could be on the brink of a major scandal. Here is a link with some more detailed information. I’m going to reserve my own comments for this story until next week, when hopefully some more light is shed on the situation. Also next week I’ll be reviewing James Blake’s book “Breaking Back.” Until then, here are some links to keep you entertained.

Five Russian Gals are in the Quarters in San Diego.

Interesting info from Bodo on San Diego

Nice piece on 6′10 John Isner, NCAA champion making waves in Washington, DC.

Let’s add in an interview with Isner as well.

Finally, this has nothing to do with tennis, but is far and away my favorite link of the week.

Also, notice my new blogroll on the right hand side of the page.  If you know of any other blogs that I should add, let me know!

In light of both Andy Roddick & James Blake failing to reach the finals of Indianoplis this past weekend, I’ve decided to unload all my thoughts regarding the future of our country’s male tennis stars.  We’ve got our current stars, Blake and Roddick, who look as though their best days may well be behind them.  Then we have our future stars, Sam Querrey and Donald Young, who have not quite lived up to their hype, Querrey’s upset last week of Blake notwithstanding.  There are a couple other young U.S. kids on the horizon, not quite as highly touted as Querrey and Young.  One would be Kellen Damico, who made the Semi’s of the Roland Garros Jr. tournament, and will attend Texas in the fall.  Then we’ve also got the countless 13-16 year olds training at various sites throughout the country that you or I have never heard of.  After much deliberation – we are not in trouble at all.

I think both Roddick and Blake have another couple years of top 10 caliber play in front of them.  They work and train as hard as anyone else on the ATP Tour, and that ethic combined with their talents should be enough to keep them around the upper echelon as the next few years go by.  I also think that two or three years from now, as they start to become less of a threat at Grand Slams, Querrey and Young will become more and more of a threat.  Even thought Querrey had a tough run of seven or so losses in a row, I don’t think anyone doubts his star quality potential.  And then there is the case of Donald Young.  Imagine for a second that you had never heard of Donald Young until right now, and I told you he won the Australian Open Jr. Title in 2005 when he was only 15.  Then I told you more recently he won the 2007 Wimbledon Jr. Title, and the following week won one of the tougher challenger events in California.  And, that he just turned 18 last week.  I would hope you might think this kid has a promising future. 

Unfortunately for Young he received millions of dollars from Nike a few years back, and with that a boatload of expectations.  He played in a bunch of ATP events last year, too early for him, lost all those matches and with it some of his confidence.  He is now back on track and coming up the way most players do.  I realize I’ve touched on Donald Young before, but as you can tell I am a big supporter of his and want to ram it down everyone’s throat not to give up on him yet.  Bottom line, am I guaranteeing Grand Slam titles for Young, or any other American in the future – no, but we will compete.

We are also incredibly spoiled, as we got used to dominating tennis.  In the 90’s we had Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Chang, Martin; the 80’s featured McEnroe and Connors, not to mention Tim Mayotte; and before that we had the likes of Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith.  Tennis is not like football, we are not the only country who takes it seriously.  Other countries are simply producing more top talent than we are right now.  I did a bit of research, and decided to compare how many people the following three countries – US, Argentina, Russia – have in the top 100 currently, and how many they had in 1995.  I did not choose them at  random, they were chosen because it seems to be that Argentina and Russia seem to fill half the draw at each Grand Slam.  As of right now, the tally is as follows – Argentina (12), Russia (8) and the US (8).  At the year end rankings of 1995, here was the tally – Argentina (2), Russia (3) and the US (13).  What does that tell us?  To be honest , nothing really.  It’s not like it was a scientific experiment.  The conclusion I draw is that these types of things tends to run in cycles, and right now we are headed downward, but just one decade ago it looked like Argentina and Russia were more or less off the tennis map, and today they comprise 20% of the entire top 100.  So let’s everyone just calm down.