Sharapova's Little Black Dress

I've pretty much stayed away from commenting on Maria Sharapova's look, mainly because she's just a kid and I think it's CREEPY. But I have to admit that the black ensemble she wore last night for her Nasdaq-100 night match was quite fetching. Of course, blondes in black are are great combo.

And that's all I'll ever say on the matter.

Federer-Blake Rematch

Let's reload: Roger Federer v. James Blake, this time in the quarterfinals of the Nasdaq-100, broadcast today on ESPN2. Just over a week ago, these two squared off in the finals of the Pacific Life Open, and after a dicey first set for Fed, the ravishing Swiss shellacked Blake in three straight sets.

No suspense, it was Fed in straights again. The first set was tight, ending in a tiebreak, although Blake's serve looked fragile throughout. The second set was right out of the Pete Sampras playbook: Fed got the early break and rode it, conserving energy and serving it out to win 6-4.

I've now seen Blake hang tough with Fed for something like 4-5 individual sets. Yes, Blake always has a ferocious set in him. Suits his go-for-broke style. If he can crack some winners early, screw with Fed's rhythm, he can do some damage. Unfortunately, Fed knows this. When he plays Blake, Fed allows him to get into his game, maybe even get cocky, then he flips the switch and takes his own game to a higher level, at which point Blake becomes disoriented, frustrated, and generally demoralized. It amounts to emotional torment, in the end. What's Blake going to do? Run around every single backhand and try to hit his forehand harder and flatter? That's just what Fed wants him to do.

Think about it. Even if Blake managed to snare a set, Fed would just start serving and volleying or playing absurd clay-court angles. Blake, even if he were brimming with confidence, would still flounder in the face off all that variety. And note that the distressing fact remains: Federer plays and wins whole tournaments in third gear. My sense is that he he doesn't want to become too preoccupied with these post-Australian Open hardcourt events, because it might mess up his campaign for this year's true prize, the French Open (Fed wants a rematch with Rafael Nadal). Sure, if he wins, great. But he doesn't want to sweat too much. And he doesn't—literally. I mean, study the dude. He barely perspires. Meanwhile, Blake is completely soggy after three games.

Every guy in the top ten has one good set in him against Federer. But that's the crucial difference between Fed and his closest competition. In tonight's first set, Blake was playing as well as he can play, while Fed was conserving his best for the tiebreak. Once he bagged the first set, he could open up a bit and begin to clobber Blake in the second. Predictably, Blake lost it in the second, got disoriented, and was gone in a hurry.

Is there anything he can do to overtake Fed? He needs to serve bigger and pour on more pressure, specifically by attacking the net. The way I see it, that's his only chance. But it's a slim one.

Paddle Tennis Sans Chemise/Got to Be Loving Gael Monfils

Managed to catch about a set's worth of the epic Gael Monfils-Daryl Lemon paddle tennis final at the Tennis Channel Open in Vegas, which was played a few weeks back.

Upshot: Monfils, a 19-year-old French kid who learned to play paddle tennis, like, two days before the tournament started, not only knocked off Scott Freeman—who bills himself (rightly, it would seem) as the greatest paddle tennis player in history—but ultimately got to the final and beat Lemon in straight sets.

Paddle tennis is an odd sport. It's played—natch—with a perforated wooden or wood-composite paddle, sort of like a big, thick, ping pong paddle. The ball looks like a regular tennis ball, but it's dead. The court is much smaller than the standard tennis court, the net is lower, the players serve underhanded, they rush the net constantly, and the whole scene tends to pretty raucous. The center of paddle tennis culture in America is Venice Beach. Makes sense as evidently many PT pros like to compete shirtless. I would wager that there's a thriving, er...wagering culture around the sport.

Anyway, either Monfils is the greatest paddle tennis prodigy to have ever emerged—he's now the Number One paddle tennis player in the country, more by common assent than by ranking—or paddle tennis just isn't that hard to get good at. This is encouraging, as when I lived in New York (the other place, besides Venice Beach, where paddle tennis is widely played), I thought about taking up the game. There were some courts near a place where I was thinking about living.

Never did, but maybe now...

Planning to drive over to Venice one of these days and check it all out. Stay tuned for reports.

Fed in Straights

So Federer beats upstart James Blake in three straight sets (6-0 in the last) to win his third consecutive Pac Life. I failed to set TiVO and consequently missed the entire match (I switched the tube on just as they were interviewing Fed on his win). Ever since we moved to LA from NYC, I've struggled to get my internal sports-on-TV clock right. It just doesn't make sense to me that they'd play a Masters Series final—in the desert, no less—at 11am. But I guess that's the way it has to be for the broadcast to work back East.

Anyhow, I gather Blake had Fed on the ropes in the first set, cracking winners all over the place and generally giving Fed trouble. And then...ffftttt. The air went outta the ballooon. It's weird. Federer can seemingly raise his game to Grand Slam levels at these smaller events, if he needs to. When he does, pity the poor sorry bastard across the net. Heck, I love what Blake has been doing lately. But lordy lordy me! He closed out the match by losing nine games in a row! Fed is unearthly good.

My theory is that he respects Blake and his game and what the guy has done, climbing back from the nether regions of the lower reaches of the bottom of the rankings. But in the end, he doesn't take him to be a great, great player. Safin and obviously Nadal he sees as Big Time. Blake he considers a consistent hard court threat. But not a Big Dog, in the historical sense. I almost feel as Fed has decorously lost to Nadal and Safin in order to set up some kind of lively rivaly for himself. I don't think he considers Roddick and Blake, who are the two best American players right now, to be at that level. Yes, I know this attributes some sort of almost supernatural control of his destiny to Fed, but I feel it, all the same.

He does have a weakness, however. Note that in the photo above, his shirt collar is too large for his neck.

Balls!

After decades of playing tennis with pretty much whatever ball my partner brought to court, I've lately been taking the fuzzy yellow sphere more seriously. For my weekly game, I usually open a can or two of fresh balls, then discard after 2-3 sets.

Probably the balls one sees most, and that get the most play, are Penn (manufactured by Head/Adidas) and of course Wilson. Dunlop and I guess Prince would be next in line. Here are my general impressions:

Penn ATP Extra Duty

Heavy and very, very fuzzy out of the can. In fact, if you hit the ball with any pace, wayward strands of felt will fly free and surround you in an optic-yellow nimbus for a few games. I find these balls to be slow and heavy overall, but they hold up. A workmanlike ball.

Wilson Extra Duty US Open

Lighter than the Penns, less fuzzy, and faster through the air. If the Penns are for baseliners, these are for servers, hard-hitting all-courters, and attacking players. Maybe not so great for touch players, as they lack feel. Deaden faster then the Penns. The kind of ball you might have to replace as a match wears on.

Dunlop Absorber

A ball that's designed to feel softer than the Penns and the Wilsons. I actually think it's feels spongy, rather than "shock-absorbing." And the weather seems to affect it, making it feel really, really heavy some days, lighter others. Ironically, it feels better coming off my Head Ti.Fire Tour Editions than it does off my backup doubles bat, a Dunlop Vision 107. The jury's still out, but I'd say I'm not thate can. They seem best for my game: responsive to spin, responsive to touch, but they don't whiz through the air like the Wilsons. If I were more of a S&V guy, I'd go with the Wilsons, no question. The Dunlops are a wildcard; I'm not sure who should use 'em.

Blake, Blake! BLAKE!!!

Boy, James Blake looks sharp and hungry. I just watched him easily dispatch Igor Andreev to get into the Pac Life semis. Sharp and hungry, but also relaxed and confident. I once called Blake a "budding tennis aristocrat." That was three years ago. He's finally starting to act the part.

You've got to chalk up his recent results—and his cracking the top ten, at long last, after falling below 200—to confidence, pure and simple. Now he believes he's a Top Ten Guy and plays accordingly. Interestingly, I think JB is at his best when nothing is expected of him. No one ever thought he'd do much after leaving Harvard to try out the tour, but he did. Similarly, everyone figured he might manage some kind of comeback after his illnesses and injury, but nothing like this. I think a big test now will be whether he decides the expect-o-meter has been switched back on. Time will tell, but he's clearly—clearly—much more mentally tought than 90 percent of the pros he's likely to face over the next year or so.

Dark horse pick for a US Open crown? Nah... But I expect him to tear up the hard court season this year leading into the Open. If he doesn't make the semis there, it will be a significant lost opportunity for the year.

Note: He has achieved a slight mental edge over Nadal, something Federer hasn't yet fully managed.

Hingis Magic

Finally got the chance to watch Martina Hingis play a full match. She lost in straights to Maria Sharapova, in the semifinals of the Pacific Life Open but it was...well, it was an intriguing contest. It has got to be doubly demonic to play Hingis, for a top modern player: first, because Hingis has the rep, all those Slams and titles; second, because she plays, at a very high level, a game that nobody faces anymore. Basically, she's a unique combination of dogged defense, energetic retrieving, and aggressive shotmaking. Add to that the fact that she rarely hits the ball the same way twice and the average, powerful contemporary WTA chick is going to experience some frustration.

Her serve...Well, it's a liability, especially the second delivery. That said, even though she might dump serve several times each match—and maybe more than several, against a hard hitter—she still manages to break the other player's serve regularly, so she makes up for her weakness in the best way possible. Obviously, she rode her game to the semis of the Pac Life Open, so something is going right.

What hilarious is listening to the commentary, as Cliff Drysdale and Mary Jo Fernandez speculate on which shot she might play next. The idea that a top woman would have any option other than to hit hard, then harder, and clobber every putaway, is downright radical. No wonder people are loving this Hingis comeback.

Can she get to a final and win it? I think she needs to add some fitness, some strength. She needs to beef up the first serve and get a little more hop on her second ball. This would enable, say, 50 percent more holds per match, which given her ability to break, could yield some three-set victories against the current top four.

A-Rod: Head Case?

Last year, in an article I wrote prior the the US Open, I questioned whether Andy Roddick had somehow been head-gamed by his lousy record against Roger Federer. This was just a few years after writing another article—a profile of James Blake—on the eve of Roddick's US Open win, which at the time seemed his breakout moment. I labeled him "unconflicted," in contrast to the pre-epic-injury Blake, who back then seemed to be struggling with his motivation.

Oh, how the tables have turned! After losing last night (March 15) to Andreev in three sets at the Pacific Life Open, Roddick seems to be the one struggling, while Blake has suddenly come into his own (he's not going to win the tournament, but I'd bet on him as a semifinalist, as I'd bet on him as a semifinalist in just about any hard-court tournament these day). Blake is riding a streak: he won the Tennis Channel Open just last week. Roddick, meanwhile, looks lost. In fact, I think he knows he's lost.

Here's what I think is going on. A year ago, it dawned on him that, if he wanted to stop losing Wimbledon finals to Federer, he was going to have to add some additional dimensions to his game. He appears to have been working on that. Specifically, he and his coach, Dean Goldfine, seems as if they are attempting to devise a "transitional" game for A-Rod, one that gets him to the net behind very big forehands. All well and good in theory, but none too pretty in execution. Between the service line and the net, Roddick looks awkward, still. My suspicion is that he knows it's not rising to a level that's going to scare Federer. So Andy is getting worried, maybe even prematurely depressed, and it's making him vulnerable to lower-ranked players. He sounds gloomy in press conferences. The guy is extemely smart, and he has a disarming capacity to undercut media concern about his less-the-steller performances (today's LA Times rightly pointed out that A-Rod is using the media as his sort of public shrink). But this only gets the guy so far. His game has not matured since he won that US Open back in 2003. Sure, he'll always be a lock at Wimbledon—the monster serves wins him too many points. Heck, he'll probably win one by default, just by making it to the finals and facing somebody who rode a lucky streak for the fortnight.

But if he intends to remain a top player—as in Top 4—he needs to do something that everybody pretty much agrees that he needs to do.

He needs to go back to Brad Gilbert.

I'm sure Goldfine is a competent coach, but what he's been hired to do for Roddick isn't paying off. The attacking game isn't developing. Gilbert, as far as I can tell, took a different approach. He stuck to fundamentals: huge serve, huge forehand. What he added to the mix was patience, and improved tactical sense, and better use of/covering-up-for a vulnerable backhand. Andy is a cool guy, but he has a tremendously ugly game. Brutally ugly. Gilbert convinced him to embrace that. It won Roddick a US Open. Then, for whatever reason, the relationship soured and Gilbert went away (most think the breakup involved money, lots of money). And Roddick has been in limbo every since.

Federer, once he peaks for a major, plays nearly flawless tennis. Unless he's injured, that's just the way it's going to be for a while. Nadal has perfected a new form of ground game—horrifying, explosive topspin—that offers an alternative to the power game that Federer has so deftly defused in countless others, including Roddick. Blake has finally learned to capitalize on his speed. Then there are all these Russian guys who are just menacingly competitive. What is Roddick going to do in the face of this evolution?

He's got to re-embrace the ugly. He's got to hook back up with Gilbert. If there's anybody who can figure out how to beat Federer on grass or a hard court, and Nadal on clay, it's Gilbert. He must have noticed, for example, that Federer doesn't like to move wide to his backhand. Doesn't Roddick have the gruesomely effective inside-out forehand to give Fed pain on that side over and over?

I firmly believe that A-Rod has the ammunition. Now he just needs the right general to get his head back in the battle.

What about the dollars? If I were Roddick, I'd be thinking that maybe Gilbert was worth his asking price.

La Cienega Park Tennis Center in Beverly Hills

Ever since arriving in Los Angeles a year and half ago, I have been playing most of my tennis at the La Cienega Park Tennis Center, which is on La Cienega just north of Olympic, on the edge of Beverly Hills. After New York, where with the exception of Central Park and Riverside Park and a few indoor clubs—and of course Forest Hills and the National Tennis Center in Queens—the public and daily-fee courts are increasingly ragged, it's nice to be at an older facility that still manages to draw a crowd.

It's never fun, for me anyhow, to play at courts where there's not at least a whiff of serious tennis in the air. Now, it's not as if you're surrounded by rising juniors and challenger pros getting in their hits. But you do hear the distant—or not-so-distant, depending on where you are in the complex—thwack of well-struck optical felt. With tennis losing out in popularity to golf and...I don't know, jetskiing or whatever in America, and especially in one-time bastion locales like southern California, it's pleasant to have found a place where the sport is, if not going strong, at least not collapsing on itself. Mind you, La Cienega is pretty typical for complexes and clubs that enjoyed their heyday several decades ago: the pro shop is tatty, the locker rooms are rudimetary, the whole thing sits on top of a parking garage. But there's charm in that. And the courts are kept in relatively good shape. From what I can tell, there seems to be a roster of at least a dozen pros on call for lessons, etc.

Something...funny has definitely happened to tennis in America and in the big cities to make the game into something that has become unappealing as an "elite" distraction. Maybe the pro game so thoroughly fails to resemble the average club match that formerly passionate practitioners have developed a disconnect. Dunno. Maybe it's just become impossible to find three other people who want to play doubles on a regular basis. Who can say?

Regardless, it's a decent place in Los Angeles to play on hard courts. What more do you need?

Playtest: Head Liquidmetal 4

I playtested a new racquet a few weeks ago, after not having playtested anything in perhaps seven years. I have been using the same stick, the Head Ti.Fire Tour Edition, since the late 1990s. My goal: Find a slightly head-heavy racquet with a bigger stringbed than my Ti. Fires (97 sq. inches). Unlike more professional racquet-review operations, such as Tennis Warehouse, whose reviews are marvels of exhaustiveness, my reviews are based on one thing and one thing only: How does the racquet feel? I'm after a very specific feel, which is sort of medium-stiff and medium-powerful. My Ti.Fires fit this description perfectly. However, I have been struggling with my serve of late, and have always found that head-heavy racquets (the Ti Fires are head-light) deliver more spin, for me. I hit very spinny serves, but I don't like to swing super-hard.

The Liquidmetal 4 is a Head model from several years back that you can still get for around $90. It's allegedly manufactured in Austria, not China, which means something to fans of Head racquets—some of the "great" Head sticks of past were Austrian-made. What's Liquidmetal? Who cares—it seems to stiffen the frame without making it feel "pingy." Works for me. This is a nice all-around racquet. It drives the ball deep without undue effort, and it's fine for serving and for volleying. Am I nuts about the feel? Not really, but that could be chalked up to the strings that were in my demo. I think they were too tight for my tastes.

Verdict? If you came down from hardcore "players" racquets in your late twenties, moving on to so-called "tweener" sticks, but have lately come to think that even tweeners are too much work, this Liquidmetal 4 is a great deal, at the current price. If I thought it might suit my game, which is all over the place, it should be good for lots of different types and ages of players. A true multigenerational offering.

Unfortunately, I didn't like the Liquidmetal 4 enough to consider replacing my current head-heavy backup, a Dunlop Vision 102 (my "doubles" racquet). Head racquets generally come off as more precise to me, but Dunlops have more of the feel I'm after in a racquet balanced toward the head. I think it has something to do with the shock-absorption material they build into the handles.

Dunlop Loses a Pair

And by the way, referring to the posts below, I notice that Blake has switched from Dunlop to Prince, at least in name. The ATP website says he's using an "experimental" model. This is interesting, because as far as I knew Blake was Dunlop's main guy for tennis. What went awry with that relationship? Meanwhile, Jonathon Power pretty much put Dunlop on top in North America for squash (he's been using various signature models for years). In fact, when I was last at Paragon Sports in New York, a salesman told me that Dunlop is far and away their best-selling squash brand. Now that Power is out of the limelight, I wonder who Dunlop will promote as their Next Big Thing. Nick Matthew, an up-and-coming youngster, plays Slazenger, which is part of the Dunlop family. Amr Shabana, the stylish Egyptian who won the Tourney of Champs this year, is a Dunlop man, but he doesn't have a real following in the US.

Kind of a double-whammy for Dunlop. PLUS, they lost golfer John Daily, to Maxfli/TaylorMade. I'd like the scoop.

Jonathon Power Retires

Jonathon Power, probably the most entertaining—and possibly the most talented—North American squash pro to come along in the past decade or so, called it quits at the Tournament of Champions in New York last week. He must have been planning this for more than a year. He went out as Number 1, after staging a hard-fought campaign to regain that position this season. He won the TOC several times, and of course it's the marquee North American event, one that he reportedly loved playing, so the announcement makes sense. I think it's all for the good. He was never the fittest player around, and in recent years it was clear that he was struggling with lots of physical issues. It's always better to see a player who knows he's fading give it one last oomph! and then depart with dignity.

I wonder if we'll see another player with Power's unique style any time soon, if ever. Creativity combined with athleticism joined to the soul of a born showman. Stay tuned. There's a new generation coming up in big-time squash.

Blake Beats Hewitt

Looks like James Blake finally broke through against Lleyton Hewitt, at the Tennis Channel Open in Vegas this past weekend. Of course, I missed the match, because I forgot to Tivo it. Doesn't seem that TTC is going to rebroadcast anytime soon. Alas. I can guess what happened, however. Ever since Blake's injury and ensuing Patience of Job test of physical and emotional fortitude a few years ago (including the death of his father), he's become a much more settled, deliberate, and, dare I say, cosmic player. When I've seen him play well, he's played tactical tennis: always looking to open up the court with his nasty inside-out forehand, to set up winners. In the old days, he would get impatient against more seasoned pros, who could negate his fantastic speed by frustrating him into going for too much on his strokes, turning his strength into a weakness. Now he lays in wait much better. He also seems to have learned to play more solid defense from watching—and losing to—Federer.

Did he do this against Hewitt? Or did he take it to this Aussie? There's certainly some bad blood between the two, given their wrangles at the US Open (including a borderline racial incident). Wish I'd seen the match. Blake is off to a strong start this year and could generate some buzz at the US Open. I'm skeptical about his chances at the French Open (red clay kills his speed advantage) and Wimbledon (his serve is unreliable). But on a hard court...