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Scouring online auctions for the grandiose, the gaudy and the god-awful
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This season's installment of craziest tennis items on Ebay starts off with a bang, an item up for sale at, cue Dr. Evil voice, one million dollars!
It's a Tommervik Wimbledon Tennis Racket Player Painting, with so far no bids on it as the clock ticks down to five days left in the auction.
 Asking $1 million for his work seems to be par for the course for Mr. Tommervik, as he also has portraits of Pee Wee Herman, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the MIllenium Falcon and yes, that is Trap Jaw from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, for sale for the same asking price.
Our next item up for bid is a single ticket to every session of the US Open - along with three parking passes in Row A of one of the luxury boxes. Asking price? $34,560. So ask yourself - new car or Novak Djokovic?
Now if you happen to have an unused 7,200 square feet lying around your ranch or private island, you'll love our next item, the 60' by 120' multi-sport tennis court - yours for just $20,000. Of course, that's before you also need the 10-year warranty (and extra three grand).
 Once you sort through an endless supply of tennis bracelets and necklaces, you get to the good stuff - in this case, a 1962 vintage Barbie and Ken tennis gift set by Mattel. According to the description, Barbie's working her bubble cut and Ken's got flocked hair (insert Ken sexuality joke here). To be perfectly honest, these look more like badmitton than tennis racquets, but these two kids are so much in love with each other, it hardly seems to matter.
 Way down at $2,195, we find the TT Matic 500 Ping Pong Table Tennis Robot. Now I realize table tennis isn't the same as real tennis, but I can't resist the opportunity to write about a robot for sale on Ebay. This one has about 12 switches on it that look to be from the 1970s and is described as a "top of the range robot." Of course, the inherent fear with any "top range" model is that eventually it will tire of spitting ping pong balls at you endlessly and figure out how to kill you with one, leading to its eventual slaughter of our species in a bloody revolt.
Perhaps not in price, but the grand daddy of them all can be found for the reasonable price of $1,999.99 - a tennis shoe pendant that are crusted with diamonds and white gold. It's 2.5 by 1.75 inches in size, for men (and what could be manlier?) and is just waiting for you to pick it up for Christmas. And with God as my witness, the same store sells similar pendants in the form of Batman and Spongebob Squarepants.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/9/2011 7:09:10 AM | with 0 comments
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"Oh Ziggy, will you ever win?" - C. Montgomery Burns
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A little healthy arguing never hurt anyone, particularly sports fans. Thus, I must respectfully disagree with my fellow TennisNowian who claims that Andy Murray's latest early-round flame out is nothing to worry about.
 Murray is the oldest 24-year-old on earth. He started playing professionally in 2003 and peaked at No. 2 in the summer of 2009, when he spent three weeks there. He made that push with an impressive string of play that saw him win the Queen's Club, reach the Wimbledon semifinals, win the Rogers Cup and reach the semifinals at Cincinnati.
You could easily argue that he's never been better than in that six-week span, but you could also argue that he was No. 2 by default, as Rafael Nadal was injured and had fallen off the pace behind the still-dominant Roger Federer.
Murray is the fourth-best player in the world, I've got no problem saying that, but who cares who the fourth-best player in the world is?
Being No. 4 means you are expected to lose in every semifinal you play to No. 1, 2 or 3. And that's who Murray has been this year. He's 0-5 on the season against the three men ranked ahead of him, and hasn't won a single set in those five matches.
I know it sounds a little nonsensical, but Murray is consistenly inconsistent, which is why he remains in the Top 5, but can never get any higher than fourth - he's been ranked there or fifth for the past three years.
He's consistently good in the fact that he's good for a tournament win or two every year, a Grand Slam semifinal and maybe a final in a Masters 1000.
That success allows him to keep his points total at a consistent level year after year, ergo he's been ranked in the Top 10 every week since July 7, 2008.
But Murray's also a shoe-in for four to five mind-blowing losses a year, and those keep him from ever moving up higher in the rankings, no matter what he does in the big tournaments.
This week, it was South Africa's Kevin Anderson doing the honors, whipping Murray in straight sets in the second round of the Rogers Cup.
By recent comparative history, losing to the No. 35 ranked Anderson is barely a blip on the Murray scale of letdowns. He lost back-to-back matches to No. 143 Donald Young and No. 118 Alex Bogomolov at the Indian Wells and Miami this spring.
The good news is, he was just as bad at Miami a year ago, losing in the second round to then-No. 101 Mardy Fish, and following it up with a second-round loss at Monte Carlo - meaning he had few points to defend and this year's failures didn't make a difference to his ranking.
I don't know what's wrong with Murray. Is it killer instinct? It is lack of focus? Is it that there are just so many champion-level players and he's the "best of the rest?"
If Nadal lost to a player outside the Top 100, Mallorca would sink to the bottom of the ocean. If Novak Djokovic did, his Serbian Davis Cup teammates would shave his head again.
Heck, when Roger Federer almost lost to No. 34 Gilles Simon in the second round of the Australian Open to start this year, we did a breaking news story on it - but Federer pulled it out, something Murray just can't seem to do ... consistently.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/11/2011 7:05:04 AM | with 1 comments
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Be afraid of Serena, be very, very afraid.
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I’m officially scared of Serena Williams.
No one should be able to come back so good so quickly after taking so much time off.
And it wasn’t just time off like Kim Clijsters or Justine Henin in the last five years, this is time off for a host of injuries, two of which kept her in either a walking boot or on crutches for months, the other of which was life-threatening.
Since she returned, Serena has gone 15-2 and won the last two tournaments she’s played in. Her only two losses are to top 10 players – Vera Zvonareva at Eastbourne and Marion Bartoli at Wimbledon – and she’s defeated four Top 11 players in the past two weeks – Bartoli, Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka and Samantha Stosur.
That sort of production so quickly is inhuman, especially for someone who will be 30 years old in five weeks. She won the Rogers Cup for the first time in a decade, and Stanford for the first time ever.
If Serena wins the US Open (and trust me, she will), she’ll join my personal Comeback Mount Rushmore which I’ve generously listed for you below.
 Michael Jordan - Abruptly quit basketball in October 1993 to play baseball (or more likely, as an off-the-book suspension for his gambling problems). Returned in mid-1995 and had dropped 55 points on the New York Knicks two weeks later. Didn’t make the NBA Finals that year, but won the title each of the next three years, and easily at that.
 Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – If you know your Texas history, Santa Anna was crushed in defeat at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, defeated by Sam Houston and company in the most decisive victory in world history. At the time, the general had been president of Mexico three times, and he managed to escape execution in Texas and was shipped back home. There, he won re-election SEVEN more times, including in 1855, a full 20 years after blundering his way through Texas’ war for independence. He lived to the ripe old age of 82.
 Obi-Wan Kenobi – During his early days, Kenobi was a total bad-ass, the only Jedi in a thousand years to defeat a Sith Lord (Darth Maul) in single combat. He even defeated his own Sith Lord student – Darth Vader – but unfortunately didn’t kill him, leaving him to die, which turned out to be bad deal. After 20 years of exile in the desert of Tatooine, eating womp rat stew and talking to boulders, Kenobi returned to active duty at age 55, chopping off the arm of an Aqualish during a bar brawl and deactivating the Death Star tractor beam that allowed Luke Skywalker to fulfill his destiny. Yes, I know Vader got him at the end, but he still got to live on in ghost form for another two movies and countless video games, comic books and novels.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/15/2011 5:26:54 PM | with 1 comments
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Is Brooklyn Decker really that attracted to whiners?
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It's getting disturbing how many times a headline about Andy Roddick losing an early-round match is accompanied by an adjective like "angry", "frustrated", "upset" or "disgruntled".
Monday night was the latest as the 15th-ranked American was upset by No. 47 Philipp Kohlschreiber, 7-6, 5-7, 1-6.
Roddick threw his racket after losing the second set, for which he got a warning from the chair umpire, then hit the ball into the stands after double-faulting in the second game of the third set, which earned him a break on a penalty point.
 Sadly, Roddick, as he has done several times in the past, did not do the smart, simple and classy thing after the match and apologize for his actions.
"It just sucks. Obviously it's a split-second thing and a split-second decision, he interjects himself and it's done," Roddick said of the umpire. "I do think it's stupid in tennis. In football, if someone throws a helmet on the sideline, it's their helmet. We wonder where we lose our ratings battle to the WWE, Monday Night Raw. John McEnroe, the guy is still getting endorsements because he was allowed to throw (expletivie delted)."
Roddick will be 29 years old in two weeks, and has acted like the dumbest 12-year pro in the world over the last year, somehow failing to see that it's his own shortcomings - be they because of injury, mental makeup or simply age as the competition gets younger - that are making him lose matches that he used to win.
No matter who is on the other side of the net for a match, Roddick's consistent opponent every time out is now Father Time... and bad news, A-Rod, he's going to beat you a whole hell of a lot.
While every person has to deal with the fact that their skills - especially athletic ones - wane as they get older, Roddick seems to have a particularly tough time seeing this, and is taking it out on the sport's officials way too much.
 He referenced McEnroe Monday night, but McEnroe acted that way throughout his career, it was part of his passion. Roddick was Mr. Likable early on, winning the US Open and achieiving No. 1 status just past his 21st birthday.
If he continues on this trend, he's likely to go down in history as the guy who was a great player early and a sore loser late.
To help A-Rod remember who he used to be and get him feeling a bit more positive as he enters the twilight of his career.
 1) YOU ARE MARRIED TO BROOKLYN DECKER - Seriously, dude, this should make you never angry or upset again, unless you're angry because all this dumb tennis is keeping you away from her. Even if you do see her every single day, the sheer amount of high fives and gasps of awe you get from other men when you walk down the street next to her should be enough to keep you smiling well into your golden years.
2) You won a major, and it looks like no other American man is  going to do that anytime soon. Well, I guess Mardy Fish could under the right circumstances, but John Isner and Sam Querrey have rapidly faded into the middle of the pack and the next bunch of American hopefuls is years away from being able to legally drink. You'll be named on TV year after year and get to do cheesy interviews about how grand things were in 2003 for seasons to come.
 3) Playing tennis gave you the opportunity to move away from Omaha, Nebraska. I know, they have the College World Series there, and according to my friend Wikipedia, it's "The Gateway to the West", but dude, the average temperature in January there is 21.7 degrees. Brooklyn ain't workin' the two-piece at 21.7 degrees.
4) You got to host "Saturday Night Live" that one time. And yes, it was pretty much one of the worst episodes ever (not as bad as Steven Seagal, maybe) but it feature skits with Keenan Thompson as Venus and Serena Williams' crazy father, Fred Armisen as Billie Jean King and a cameo by John McEnroe.
 5) YOU'VE MADE AT LEAST $19.6 MILLION PLAYING TENNIS AND YOU ARE MARRIED TO BROOKLYN DECKER! Yeah, buddy, $19.6 million. You know that first-round loss to Kohlschreiber on Monday? You made $9,200 for that. This is your life. Almost 10 grand to go out there and get your butt beat. And again, dude, Brooklyn. Do you know how many people have read this blog simply because I've mentioned Brooklyn Decker? Do an SEO check on her some time. Then do one on yourself. Then do the math. Now take that $9,200, go buy Brooklyn something nice, or get some plugs, but just stop complaining.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/16/2011 7:05:04 AM | with 4 comments
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No time for tan or laundry as Clijsters hits the gym in Jersey
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 I have never been more in awe or more jealous of Kim Clijsters.
She's my favorite current player on the WTA tour as it is, but her stock soared during a recent interview with Sports Illustrated when she was asked about her rehab training taking place state-side in New Jersey.
When asked about living in the Garden State, SI tried to ask her opinion of the Gym-Tan-Laundry sensation known as MTV's Jersey Shore.
SI.com: Where have you been training?
Clijsters: I started my rehab in Belgium for the first three weeks. Then I've been in the States, in New Jersey, where my husband and his family are from. We have a home there.
 SI.com: If I said "Snooki or JWoww," what would you say?
Clijsters: [long pause] Sorry?
SI.com: If I said "Snooki or JWoww," would you know what I was talking about?
Clijsters: No.
SI.com: No Jersey Shore?
Clijsters: No. I don't waste my time with that stuff. I don't have time to watch those kinds of things.
SI.com: But you're living in Jersey. Your husband is American. Your English is perfect. You know, if you played for the U.S., we would stop having to hear about the state of American tennis. You sure that doesn't have any appeal to you?
Clijsters: But I'm a Belgian! My husband has dual citizenship, but I don't. Just my Belgian passport. I've always loved coming to America, even when I was younger. I've always had a close connection to the people and when I've played here -- at Stanford or San Diego and L.A. -- I really enjoyed it. Over the years, my feelings have grown stronger and stronger. I've been able to have some of my best results here. At the U.S. Open, it's so much fun. We have so many family members sitting in the box, it feels so much more personal than a Grand Slam.
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I am so jealous of Clijsters right now. Imagine a world where you didn't know how Ron-Ron and Sammi can't stay single and try to kill each other when they're a couple; how The Situation's basic move for picking up women is looking at them and saying "You wanna smush?"; or that DJ Pauly D's hair could withstand a nuclear detonation.
She's so lucky.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/17/2011 6:22:26 AM | with 1 comments
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Hey Serena, if you punch Scott Disick in the face, I'll give you $10!
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Last year, the rumor was that Serena Williams faked a host of foot injuries to work on her public image, perhaps get plastic surgery and promote several new products.
This year, it's for a wedding?
With back-to-back tournament wins in which she looked absolutely dominant, Williams abruptly withdrew from the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati on Tuesday, citing a swollen toe.
 As coincidence (but not really) would have it, Serena's gal pal Kim Kardashian is getting married this very Saturday to not-that-good NBA power forward Kris Humphries, who looks like a cross between Jo Wilfried Tsonga and Taylor Lautner.
In one of the least-convincing answers of all time, Williams addressed Kardashian's upcoming nuptials after revealing she would withdraw.
"Now that I have time probably will (attend the wedding)," Williams said. "I hadn't thought about it."
Serena was spotted at Kardashian's bridal shower in late July along with Demi Lovato, former Spice Girl Mel B and cooking guru Rachael Ray.
It was barely over a year ago that Williams and Kardashian were spotted out on the town - Williams wearing a giant boot on her injured right foot.
A month before that, Williams had a massive pre-ESPY Awards party at her new house in Bel Air, California, mere days after suffering the alleged injury outside a restaurant in Europe.
Kardashian was there too, with new boyfriend and Dallas Cowboy Miles Austin, who the socialite dated for approximately 10 seconds before switching sports, ala sister Khloe, and becoming smitten with Humphries.
Besides Serena, sister Venus, also conveniently not playing this week, is expected to be in attendance at Saturday's wedding, along with Q-list celebrities including Kelly Osbourne, Mark Ballas, Nicole Richie, Ryan Seacrest and Kathie Lee Gifford.
Williams is 16-2 in her comeback that started just before Wimbledon. Her withdrawal means 10th-seeded Samantha Stosur, who was Serena's opponent in the Rogers Cup final
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/17/2011 10:59:46 PM | with 0 comments
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When 900 years old you are, play as good you will not! -- Yoda
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 I have no problem admitting that Kim Clijsters is my favorite player on the WTA tour, but I feel she might be getting dangerously close to what I like to call "The Favre Zone."
Last Friday, Clijsters announced that she would not take part in this year's US Open - the major she has won each of the past two years - because of an abdominal injury.
She'll also miss the tournaments in Tokyo and Beijing, which will prevent her from making up any of the 2,000 points she'll lose by not being able to defend her crown at Flushing Meadows.
Losing those points means she'll have to get healthy and play spectacular tennis to qualify for the year-end championships. The 2,000-point loss will drop her to 4,501 total ,which would put her ninth in the world in the current rankings.
If she doesn't land in the top eight for the year-end championships, it'll be another 1,340 points down the drain, which she collected by winning the illustrious title a year ago. That would sink Clijsters down into the mid-teens, hardly the ending to what she had planned to be her last full year on tour.
Planning one's exit from a sport is so very difficult, the spirit of competition and the heart can often overpower what the mind decides is truly the proper time to leave.
Going out on top is a pipe dream that many athletes subscribe to, but just can't commit to, the will to compete, even at a diminished level of return, is simply too strong.
When Clijsters returned to the sport in 2009, it was the storyline of a lifetime as she took the title at the US Open just two tournaments in. She was a stupendous 40-7 in 2010, winning five titles including the US and the Tour Championships, all at the age of 27.
She finished No. 2 in the world and really couldn't have played better, which would have made retiring for good to raise her beautiful daughter about as happy an ending as one could have.
But with No. 1 suddenly attainable again and the tantalizing possibility of wrapping up her career with a shot at the gold medal in the 2012 Summer Games, Clijsters pressed on.
It seemed like the right decision early on as she won the Australian Open for her fourth overall major and first outside of the US. But about six weeks later, the wear and tear of the full-time committment to the tour and her own age (28 is young everywhere but tennis and figure skating) started to take their tolls.
She fell in the second round of the French Open and it hasn't been pretty since, as injuries have kept her out week after week, and her comebacks have been brief.
I can't help but think of the aformentioned Brett Favre as I watch Clijsters struggle to get healthy. In 2009, Favre moved to Minnesota and had a marvelous season, throwing 33 touchdowns - a career high against only seven interceptions, and leading his team to a 12-4 record that ended one game shy of the Super Bowl.
 Unable to accept this marvelous performance, Favre returned in the 2010 season at 41 years of age, and the luster had clearly come off the jewlery. Without even mentioning his off-the-field controversies, Favre couldn't find his former magic touch, missing games for the first time in 18 years and throwing more interceptions (19) than touchdowns (11).
It's truly hard to fault any player for trying to extend their career just one more season. But knowing when the skils are starting to go is truly a gift, and something to be lauded.
 That's why I've got so much respect for a player like Elena Dementieva, who hung up he racquet at the end of the 2010 season at age 29.
Dementieva spent every year but one between 2003 and 2010 in the Top 10 (She was 11th in 2007), but when she fell from fifth in 2009 to ninth in 2010, she decided that the toll on her body and her time was getting to be too much.
Having won nearly $15 million in prize money, she said her goodbye to 40-love and hello to real love by marrying hockey player Maxim Afinogenov in Moscow.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/23/2011 8:20:57 PM | with 3 comments
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Serena's teenage nightmare
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 The United States might not be so great on producing new champions, but it sure can find players that look the part.
Submitted for your approval, the tale of the tape for Illinois teenager Madison Keys, a 5-foot, 10-inch 16-year-old phenom being coached by John Evert.
Keys won three rounds of the WIldcard Playoffs in Washington DC to notch a spot in the main draw of the US Open. She defeated another American teenage phenom, Beatrice Capra, in comeback fashion - 3-6, 6-4, 6-0 - to grab the spot.
Keys has played just one other main draw this year, losing in the first round of Miami, although there she took Patty Schnyder to a third-set tie-breaker before falling.
If you've heard Keys' name before, it's probably because of the buzz she earned during the summer of 2009, when at age 14 she played WTT for the Philadelphia Freedoms and whipped then-Wimbledon champion Serena Williams 5-1.
Equally buzz-worthy was her response to questions about how she got into tennis after the match.
"I actually got into tennis because of Venus and Serena," Key said. "I was watching Wimbledon one year and Venus was playing and I really liked how she was playing, but I also liked her outfit. I told my dad I wanted a dress like Venus and he said 'only if you play tennis.' So, I went to Walgreen's got a racket and started playing."
We will safely speculate that Walgreen's no longer supplies Keys with her racquets.
That same year, she became one of the youngest females to ever win a match on the WTA Tour, defeating then-No. 81 Alla Kudryavtseva at age 14 years, 48 days, doing so via a wild card she received for at Ponte Vedra Beach.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/24/2011 7:03:24 AM | with 1 comments
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The New York Times shows its comedic side
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Move over, Roddick. Step aside, Murray.
There's a new Andy taking charge of the US Open.
Comedian Andy Samberg has teamed up with photographer Walter Iooss Jr. to give The New York Times Magazine a phenomenal look at several iconic men's tennis champions - notably Americans John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Sweden's Bjorn Borg.
 Combining photography with digital composition, Samberg is thrust into several of the game's defining moments, aping Agassi, becoming Bjorg, copying Connors, mocking McEnroe and sampling a shirtless Sampras.
To check all eight of the splendid photos, check out the gallery at The New York Times website.
And if you don't know Samberg's work, look below at his Lonely Island crew's tribute (with a splendid assist by Michael Bolton) to the one and only Captain Jack Sparrow.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/25/2011 8:35:19 PM | with 1 comments
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#14 Stefan Edberg (2) - 1991-1992
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To celebrate the 14 days of the US Open, Tennis 'n' Stuff presents a countdown of the Top 14 champions in US Open history. Come back every day to see where your favorite champion ranks.
#14 Stefan Edberg (2) - 1991-1992
Had he not gone on to achieve greatness, Edberg would have been known for a terrible footnote at the US Open.
While competing there as a junior in 1983, a wild serve by Edberg struck linesman Richard Wertheim in the groin, causing him to fall and hit his head on the pavement. Five days later, Wertheim died of blunt cranial trauma. His family later sued the USTA for $2.25 million, while Edberg, despite being visibly shaken by the event, went on to win the junior title.
By 1991, Edberg had racked up four Grand Slam titles and achieved the world No. 1 ranking.
He was No. 2 in the world behind Boris Becker entering the US Open, but had never advanced past the tournament’s semifinals and had been shocked in the first round a year previous.
Edberg blew through the first four rounds with only one set loss, and was just as dominant in the final eight, needing only three sets each to dispose of fifth-seeded Ivan Lendl in the semifinals and fourth-seeded Jim Courier in the final.
If 1991 had been the sprint to the title for Edberg, 1992 was the unqualified marathon. The Swede entered the tournament seeded second behind Jim Courier, but barely made itout of his own section, falling behind a break of Czechoslovakia's Richard Kraijcek before gutting out a 6-4, 6-7(6), 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 victory.
It was the first of three straight five-set victories for Edberg. The next was a quarterfinal against former champion Ivan Lendl. Edberg won the first two sets, lost the next two ,then squeaked by with a 7-6(3) tie-breaker win in the fifth.
Fourth-seeded Michael Chang came next, reprising the two's French Open finale. Two of the first three sets went to tie-breaks, and the match itself was the longest in tournament history at 5 hours, 26 minutes.
By comparison, Edberg's championship win over Pete Sampras was almost easy, despite losing the first set, he rallied to a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(5), 6-2 win.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/29/2011 7:05:21 AM | with 0 comments
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Two career titles: 1994, 1999
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Other than Wimbledon, the flash and dash of Andre Agassi had gone largely unfulfilled by the 1994 season. By 1999, he had fallen off the face of the tennis landscape.
Both times, the US Open helped change his image. And after all, image was everything.
The brash American was 24 at the time of the 1994 US Open. He had started the year ranked 32nd, but used wins at Scottsdale, Miami and Toronto to vault into the Top 20 by the time the tournament started.
Unseeded, Agassi defeated five straight Top 15 opponents to claim the crown, including three players ranked in the Top 10.
His toughest battle came in the fourth round, when he needed five sets to outlast No. 6 Michael Chang, 6-1, 6-7(3), 6-3, 3-6, 6-1. In the semifinals, he KO'ed Todd Martin in four sets, then swept Michael Stich with a pair of tie-break wins to claim the title.
Agassi would go on to win the 1995 Australian Open to start the next season, and took over the No. 1 spot in the world for the first time later that season.
Over the next four years, he would rise to No. 1, fall to No. 110, contemplate retirement, shave his head, divorce his wife, win the French Open in shocking fashion and rise back to No. 1.
He was the second seed heading into the 1999 tournament, but became the de facto No. 1 when Pete Sampras had to withdraw with a back injury.
Agassi lost only one set in the first five rounds, then lost the first set of the semifinals to Yevgeny Kafelnikov, before blitzing him with consecutive 6-3 victories.
He faced fellow American Todd Martin, who had beaten two unseeded opponents in the previous two rounds. Martin went up two sets to one in the final, with a pair of tie-break winners, but Agassi took the last two sets 6-3 and 6-2 to claim the championship, eventually breaking Sampras' six-year hold on the year-end No. 1 ranking as well.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/30/2011 6:34:44 AM | with 0 comments
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Look at all these rumors, running me every day
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By now you've surely read that Novak Djokovic has proclaimed that he does not sleep in a hyperbaric chamber ala the late, great Michael Jackson.
But Djokovic is a celebrity, and getting more famous all the time. So he must do ridiculous things that the rest of us would never take part in, right?
Here's a look at a few other Djokovic rumors that may or may not be true.
1) He's actually Screech from "Saved by the Bell".
 Possibility it's true: 3% - The last time I saw Screech, he was doing Celebrity Boxing against Horshack from "Welcome Back, Kotter" and had gained roughly 600 pounds.
Rumor Upside: Possibility of having Tiffani-Amber Thiessen out to some matches.
Rumor Downside: Possibility of having any of the other nuts from that cast - Mr. Belding, A.C. Slater, etc. out to some matches.
2) He once killed a man just for snoring too loud.
Possibility it's true: 25% - He definitely could shut up a snorer with his powerful backhand, but there's also the chance I just heard this on an old Time-Life book series commercial while falling asleep one night.
Rumor upside: His intimidation factor goes up.
Rumor downside: Hard to win a Grand Slam when you're doing 40 to life.
 3) He's a cross-dresser.
Possibility it's true: 50% - Hey, I'm not the one who pretended to be Maria Sharapova in front of the cameras.
Rumor upside: His clothing endorsement possibilities just doubled.
Rumor downside: Everything else.
4) He's dating Jelena Ristic.
 Possibility it's true: 100% - Unless someone is really good with Photoshop.
Rumor upside: Um, look at the pictures and figure it out yourself.
Rumor downside: None, as long as she keeps taking photos like this.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/30/2011 6:43:43 AM | with 0 comments
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Three-time champion: 1969, 1970, 1973
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 Margaret Court (3) - 1969-1970, 1973
- Before there was Kim Clijsters, there was Margaret Court, who made the mother of all comebacks in 1970 after temporarily retiring from the sport in 1966.
At that point, she had won the Open twice as an amateur, also winning her native Australian Open seven times, the French Open twice and Wimbledon twice.
She returned to the game in 1968, the first year of the Open Era, and won the Australian and French Opens in 1969. Reaching the US Open as the No. 2 seed and barely broke a sweat in the first three rounds, losing only four total games.
After a bizarre 6-0, 9-7 quarterfinal win, she blasted Virginia Wade 7-5, 6-0 in the semifinals and America's Nancy Richey 6-2, 6-2 for the title.
In 1970, Court had something special going as she entered the field in New York, having already won the Australian Open over Kerry Reid, the French Open against Helga Masthoff and the Wimbledon title against Billie Jean King.
Not surprisingly, she was the No. 1 seed entering the Open, and didn't lose more than three games in a single set until the semifinals.
Her only competition came in the finals, when America's Rosie Casals took the second set off her.
Refocused, Court blasted Casals 6-1 in the third set to wrap up the first single-season Grand Slam since Maureen Connolly Brinker had done so 17 years previous in 1953.
It would be another 18 years before another woman matched the feat - Germany's Steffi Graf in 1988.
Posted to Tennis and stuff. by
Nick on 8/31/2011 6:27:51 AM | with 0 comments
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