Bait and Switch

Selena Roberts, a tennis writer for The New York Times, has bugged me for years. I can't stand her prose style.

Here she is in Sunday's paper (today's) on Federer v. Nadal (I'm just quoting her lede):

"Forget Roger Federer's aura of infallibility, how he is perpetually aloft on the court, a leaf aboard a breeze."

She goes on to discuss how Nadal has messed up Fed's image, but mercy me, how Selena paints with one color, the color purple. Heck, instead of forgetting all that stuff that SR tells us to, how about we forget the bizarre image: an infallible floating leaflike aura?

He's a Swiss tennis pro, for crying out loud.

What annoys me more, however, if that the NYT sports section runs a victory shot of Amelie Mauresmo, a big shot--then jumps the story to page 4 (page 4!), so we can enjoy the Natterings of Selena beneath, under the "Sport of the Times" rubric, rather than get the dope on the first French ladies champ at Wimbledon in, what? Eighty-two years?

Bad deal. Bad editing. Missed opportunity.

Headband Guys Take Cap Boys

Just a quick thought, before attempting to post something on the Fed-Nadal Wimbly final.

What we have seen categorically over the past years is that you want to be wearing anything other than a baseball-style cap if you hope to be dominant in men's professional tennis.

Headband Guys: Federer, Nadal. And before that, Borg, McEnroe (Mac still goes for the Springsteen bandana, these days). Sampras, no headband, no cap. But pointedly, no cap. Lendl: Not really a cap, but that French Foreign Legion thing during the later years. Blake: headband, and on the ascent. Bjorkman: Headband, and you see where it got him this year.

Ivan L.: No cap, no headband. Glorious bald pate.

Cap Boys: Roddick, Hewitt. Before them... well, nobody really wore caps much.

And that's because caps look silly. Yes, yes, they keep the sun off the face. But they're still caps. They're for little boys. They're not for men.

Federer and Nadal wear THE SAME HEADBAND. Coincidence? I think not. Chances are pretty good that we're going to see an all-headband series of Grand Slam finals this year, as Nadal has to be the odds-on fave for the US Open final, along with Fed, and of course headband-wearing Marcos Baghdatis was the Oz Open finalist.

Simply put, the headband is dashing. The cap is juvenile.

The headband is sexy, Euro.

The cap is scruffy, Americano.

So there you have it: If you want to be a player in the '00s, you gotta lose the cap.

When I play, and I wear a cap, I feel like a twink. When I play and I wear a headband, I feel like a badass, and I'm 39.

Anything is better than a cap. ANYTHING. Floppy terry-cloth tennis bucket hat--better.

Well, anything except a visor, which is a castrated cap.

Nadal Impressive

OK, this kid has got something. He is almost willing victories on the grass. This has been quite a run for him. Extremely impressive. And incredible for the fans, as as we have had this Nadal-Federer running battle now for almost four delightful months.

More later.