Wallace on Tennis

You know that David Foster Wallace knows something about tennis when, in his article about Roger Federer, he credits whom with being the father of modern day power tennis?

Bjorn Borg? Jimmy Connors? No, Ivan Lendl.

If you've never followed tennis, you may not be aware of the Czech player who, for many years, seemed like the Darth Vader of tennis. Tennis has produced its share of striking women players, and I mean their appearance, in addition to their quality of tennis. The 70s didn't exactly produce male studs.

Connors and Borg, who were the top players of their day, were considered reasonably good looking for their time. Connors wore his long hair over his ears, much like the Beatles. Borg wore his hair even longer. And it seemed, unlike Agassi, something Borg preferred to do, rather than a stunt to promote an image.

Lendl, on the other hand, was Eastern European, with dark hair, sunken eyes, and for a while, crooked teeth. Early in his career, he had a nasty habit of spitting all the time. Over time, he stopped spitting, his teeth got straightened, but many still considered him ugly, and as many people liked players like Kournikova for their beauty, they disliked Lendl for his lack thereof.

Furthermore, as Lendl sought to be number one, he saw how McEnroe would argue with the chair umpire and realized that he, too, needed to argue, even as it made McEnroe unpopular, and it didn't help Lendl either. McEnroe was perhaps the premier serve and volleyer of his day. He would charge the net, but early in his career, Lendl showed the kind of blistering power that marked his game. Lendl wasn't above pegging a player on the passing shot, a legal shot that makes it difficult to volley, but considered, in polite company, in poor taste. Lendl would learn to remove that shot from his game.

There were several keys to Lendl's game that lead to its influence over the modern game. His huge forehand was number one. Lendl frequently hit his shot down the line and frequently ran around his backhand to hit inside out. To do this, Lendl would move left. But instead of striking the ball with his backhand, he would continue to move left, then hit the shot with his forehand, but with the same target as his backhand, that is, to his opponent's backhand (assuming his opponent was a righty).

He ran around the backhand because he had a powerful forehand.

Much like Babe Ruth may have hit so many home runs because he tried, Lendl went for winners, because he could. Although bigger racquets have been blamed for causing the increase in power, Lendl actually used quite a small racquet, at 72 square inches. Had racquets been limited in size to about 80 square inches, Lendl still would have had his power game.

The revolution that marked the advent of power tennis may have had more to do with graphite racquets than oversized racquets. Sampras and Edberg used a racquet at 85 square inches, a significantly larger size than the 72 that Lendl used (the old timey racquets were 66 square inches, so Lendl used something only a touch bigger).

Power tennis was going to come whether or not the large racquet did. Case in point. Jimmy Arias. Few people remember Jimmy Arias because his career was so short. Jimmy Arias used the same racquet as Borg, the Borg Pro, which was a classically sized racquet. He had a huge forehand, but an awkward backhand. Ultimately, his diminuitive size hurt him.

Although Lendl epitomized power tennis, it's likely that it would have come anyway. Lendl's began playing his brand of power tennis starting around 1979. He would begin to play superlative tennis around 1982, when he beat McEnroe seven times in a row. Lendl would hit winners off the ground.

Connors hit hard, but his goal was like the classic Aussies. Get to net, and cut the point off. Borg was a steady baseliner willing to run down shots all day long.

Mind you, Lendl didn't hit with flurries of winners like modern day Federer or Nadal. He was raised on European clay, and could rally from the backcourt with the best of them. Like Borg or Wilander, Lendl could and would rally 20-30 shots. But as he improved, he learned to go for winners. He showed it was possible to do this, and it changed the way tennis was played.

It took a while for women to get to that level. For women, the player that made the huge breakthrough was Steffi Graf. Martina rushed the net, and her serves kept opponents off balance. She'd win quick matches because they couldn't pass her. But Graf would overpower her opponents from the baseline. Her biggest nemesis would come in one Monica Seles. Where Graf had a huge forehand, her backhand was an accurate slice, but one she rarely hit winners off of. Strong enough that it was hard to attack her backhand, it was not strong enough to win outright points.

Monica Seles, on the other hand, hit two hands on both sides, and so she didn't have real weaknesses except her speed. Graf was simply a much quicker player than Seles.

It wasn't long after Lendl began showing how power tennis would be played that a series of other players joined in. In the early days, they would have been Boris Becker, then Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. The Bolletieri bunch were actually power hitters that included Jimmy Arias, Aaron Krickstein, before Agassi broke through. Even Ecuadorian, Andres Gomez, was a formidable power hitter with a huge lefty hook.

Really, in those days, you could play a game that was more Borg-like or more classic. Edberg played a classic serve and volley game, becoming the most elegant and precise volleyer of his day, an oddity among Swedes, who preferred to hit from the backcourt. His huge kick serve became a model for others to follow, and while his serve eventually became a liability as others managed to serve harder and harder, Edberg played good tennis for over 10 years, basically from 1983 to 1993.

Wilander was really a throwback. He lacked the power of Lendl, but was quick enough to run down Lendl's shots, and was consistent enough to give Lendl fits. Lendl may have hit winners from the baseline, but not tremendously often. Wilander had his best year in 1988, but then his decline was huge in 1989. Somehow, he managed to stay in the game even through 1994. He was Borg with a lot more variety and thinking.

By the time 1990 rolled around, players like Sampras and Agassi were redefining the game once again, going for even more winners, until you get to 2002 when Federer, then Nadal started their rise. Gone were the days when top players could have weak groundstrokes but big serves and volleys. A player like Roddick, with a huge serve, should be a great serve and volleyer, yet, his game is played from the back, like many of his contemporaries.

It's amazing a top serve and volleyer like Federer can't actually play serve and volley, so he must resort to playing off the ground. He's perhaps the most accomplished serve and volleyer to rarely play that style anymore, partly because passers are so good that he can't do it, partly because he's fantastic off the ground as well.

David Foster Wallace understood a lot of the history of tennis especially tennis in the 1980s and onwards. I grew up watching tennis and would agree with his assessment of tennis. Of course, he used far more eloquent words in his summary of tennis, but he had the tennis acumen to point it out.

Clever Lines

With so many people on the Internets, people come up with so many good zingers that go by the wayside. Some are deemed too harsh, too offensive.

I was just listening to Barack Obama's speech. He criticizes McCain, especially McCain's use of lobbyists on his campaign staff. He says "If you think his staff is working day and night to put themselves out of a job, I've got a bridge to sell you in Alaska".

This drew cheers.

But. But.

Obama could have taken it further. He could have said something like "And his vision for the future of the US, is much like that bridge. It's a vision to nowhere. We've had eight years of that. We don't need four more. I'm sure you will join me in saying 'Thanks, but no thanks'".

I like the twist in using that phrase back on McCain.

David Foster Wallace

I can't say I know much about David Foster Wallace. His name was only vaguely familiar to me. I had heard of his book Infinite Jest, but not much more than that.

Wallace had been a junior tennis player; his parents were academics. Although he found his full expression as a writer, he never lost the love he had for tennis, especially the players that would never become the best, that toiled as journeymen. This might have been the life Wallace would have had for himself, but his life took him a different direction.

Wallace wrote a piece for the New York Times two years ago, just before the US Open, waxing rhapsodic over the elegance of Federer. You knew he preferred the effortless smoothness of Federer over the bullish Spaniard, Nadal, who, while effective, doesn't evoke beauty as much he does toughness, whippy shots that spring from his muscled physique. He has a cyborgian like quality that doesn't match his shy, deferring personality.

Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008. As a tennis observer, he had to know that his favorite player to watch, Roger Federer, had been having a down year. Federer had had mono at the beginning of the year. Despite this, he reached the Australian Open semifinals in January, losing to Novak Djokovic.

He had plenty of losses, many more than he was used to. He lost decisively to Nadal at the French, then lost in five sets that was punctuated by rain delays, and darkness, in what many proclaimed as the best match ever played at Wimbledon. He lost early in some tune-ups to the US Open, to Gilles Simon, then to Ivo Karlovic. He went to the Olympics and lost to James Blake in the quarters, whom he had never lost to before.

He had gone from a shoo-in to break Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slam events, which Sampras mostly feasted at Wimbledon and the US Open, to a player that looked washed up. This was washed up after reaching one semifinal (the Australian) and two finals (the French, Wimbledon). Most people would consider that a successful year. But not for the dominant Swiss. Had Nadal passed him by? Had Djokovic?

Federer was simply losing matches by making mistakes. Now, Federer always makes mistakes, far more than most players of his caliber. While Nadal is parsimonious with errors, Federer is a gambler, going for high risk to get high reward. When he's on, he looks sublime. Even when he's off, he's often quite competitive and still wins. But this year, he would inexplicably toss several errors in a row, and lose games he had no business losing.

The one respite from all this came from an unusual source. Federer not only represented Switzerland in singles (he was again, flag-bearer) in the Olympics, but also doubles, where he teamed up with Stanislas Wawrinka, who had cracked the top ten that year. Wawrinka wasn't exactly a great doubles player, but he serves well, had a decent backhand volley. They upset the Bryan brothers of the US in the semifinals, quite a feat, considering the Bryan brothers had been number 1 and have played doubles for years, where Federer plays sparingly.

The team then captured gold over Swedish team of Thomas Johansson and Simon Aspelin. Johansson had won an Australian Open back in the cusp between the decline of Sampras and the rise of Federer, when lesser players like Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Roddick were laying claims to number 1.

Although Federer is first and foremost a singles player, this doubles win seemed to thrill him. The casual camaraderie, the winning, all lead to smiles for Roger who never thought winning in gold in doubles was possible nor that it would bring him that much joy. Federer's likely to be a little too old to win Olympic gold in 2012, when he'd be 31, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Emboldened by his victory, he came to the US Open a bit of underdog. With his perennial rival, Rafael Nadal, having won Olympic gold, most people felt that he was the odds-on favorite to win in New York. There were a few other names mentioned. Djokovic had beaten Nadal in Cincinnati, and fell in a close match to Nadal in Beijing. Andy Murray, the Scot and the great British hope to win Wimbledon, had beaten Djokovic twice.

Yet, the draw worked so that Federer had to play Djokovic in the semis on one side, and Nadal would have to face Murray. Djokovic and Nadal were the favorites in both matches.

The men's semifinals were moved early in the day with Hurricane Hanna threatening to rain out Saturday play. The rains somehow moved up the east coast and west of New York until rains fell around 2 PM. Federer played his match at 11 AM, and playing as crisp a tennis as he has in a long time, dispatched Djokovic, whose game seemed off-kilter after an ill-advised post-match comment against Roddick where he voiced his disapproval of Roddick claiming he was faking his injuries, lead to a rash of boos. Djokovic tried to recover, but already the fickle crowd was against him.

He tried to play without complaint, without resorting to timeouts, and it lead to a strangely muted game, just as Federer was finding his timing, and playing like 2007 instead of 2008.

Although Federer expected to play his longtime rival and Nike co-endorser, Rafael Nadal, Nadal's exit from the Open came at the hands of the wily Scot. Murray had gone on a regimen of building up his fitness and muscles to compete with Nadal. But it was his brain that was on display, as he moved Nadal around expertly, mixing up pace, alternately hitting hard and soft, forcing Nadal, a man whose style requires a great deal of energy, a man who had spent many weeks trying to be at the top of his game, a man who was spent after his victory in Beijing, and crafted a strategy that lead to a win.

It didn't help that Nadal, who likes his routine to be just so, everything nice and predictable, found his schedule all jumbled up, as he and Murray had to take the court several hours early to try to get in a few games prior to Hanna hitting New York. The normally energetic Nadal came out a bit lifeless, while Murray came out dominant, taking Nadal to task early in the first set, and holding his advantage to win a second set in a tiebreak.

Even a rain delay that interrupted play for the entire day just as Nadal had gone up a break of serve in the third set, a delay that should have helped Nadal regroup, wasn't enough. Although Nadal came out far more animated on Sunday than he did Saturday, and took the third set, and it looked as if Murray had no chance to recover, Murray then managed to recover a break, a break that came easily after Murray himself had so many chances to break, and eventually clawed back to win the match in four sets.

Murray came out to try to take it to Federer, a guy he's had good results against, despite a paucity of meetings. Somehow, Murray expected an error-prone Federer, and chose to play off-pace shots, hoping to entice errors out of the masterful Swiss. Roger was having none of it. He attacked and played as crisply as he did against Djokovic.

When Murray plays junk ball, it can be tough for him to get out of it, and start hitting with more power. He tried to alter his game, and was getting some success when a key point early in the second set when a ball that should have been called out, but was not, lead to deuce and eventually a Federer hold. He would go on to hold that game, and eventually secure a break and take the second set.

After the second set, Federer really let it all hang out. Drop shotting, coming to net, playing fast and loose. He was having fun, and Murray, clearly dejected, was letting Federer do what he pleased.

And so when Federer won his 13th Grand Slam title, quite improbably, all the while trying to tell the public that he still had enough game to challenge for the titles, telling people that his losses had not gotten to him, that he was this close to getting back to where he was, and finally--finally, people believed him.

David Foster Wallace, who had to be following the travails of Federer, surely was thinking that, despite his depression, he was going to live long enough to watch the US Open, live long enough to see if the Swiss maestro had it within him. And when Federer hoisted that trophy above his head, perhaps Wallace savored this victory as much as Federer, a victory of beauty and grace over guile and power.

And he savored it until that Friday.

And then he was no more.

Charlie K

The web snuck up people, didn't it? Moved into their lives as seamlessly as technology seems to do. The microwave. The VCR. The cell phone. But the web is the gateway to information. Questions you would never have bothered to look up can be checked with so little effort.

They are showing the 1991 Steven Spielberg's Hook. Not his best film, but still very entertaining. Part of the reinterpretation of the venerable tale involves Hook's plan to be a better father to Peter Pan's son than his real father.

The son, a shy uncertain kid, is played by Charlie Korsmo. Made me wonder, what exactly happened to Charlie Korsmo? Turns out, not much. At least, acting-wise. He made one more film after Hook, and that was 7 years later, and pretty much nothing else after that. He was apparently offered a role in the Terminator movies.

Instead, turns out he was a bit of a geek. He majored in physics at MIT, and then obtained a law degree at Yale about two years ago. There have been some very bright actors, though they are few and far between. It's perhaps no surprise that child actors, who are already precocious in acting, might be precocious in other subjects too.

Too bad he's a staunch conservative.

The Reinvented Newspapers

People say that newspapers are dying, mostly because of the web. At one point, people thought you could sell newspapers on the web, but when that failed, they put select content for sale, and when that failed, well, that was tough. People now expect their news to be free on the Web. The New York Times. The Washington Post.

To compete with television, online papers have been adding tiny video segments to break up the text, text, text, of most articles. Before I extol the advances of using video, I have to say that newspapers and newsmagazines serve a much better function for informing a reader than TV does.

By its very nature, news programs on television really are reduced to sound bites. An article that may take you 20-30 minutes to read would never see the light of day on television where being longer than 2-3 minutes will drive someone to watch Jeopardy!. We need long, in-depth articles because they reveal the depth of real issues.

Having said that, it makes sense for online papers to bring a contrast by having little video segments.

Many of these video segments lack the gravitas of real articles. They are as much about the person presenting the information, and their personality, as they are about the article they report on. For example, I just watched a snippet of Chris Cooley being interviewed.

All in all, it's a friendly interview. It's not interviewing a head of state, or asking the political stance of someone running for high office. It's an insight to an athlete who gives you a little slice of their life. Tabloid magazines wouldn't do so well if the public didn't have curiosity of how the rich and famous lead their lives. Even if the ultimate conclusion is that many of them lead similar lives to the rest of us, that is often a refreshing conclusion.

It's too bad video isn't more elegantly laid on a webpage, and usually requires a bit of digging around. Even so, I think it increases the personal touch of a paper, the kind of intimate immediacy that rigid reporting doesn't attempt to achieve.

The Difference Between Conservatives and Liberals

Yet another compelling TED talk, well worth the twenty minutes it takes to listen to it.

The Honest Life

One site I like to occasionally visit is "Stuff White People Like". The number of items on the list is now just a shade over 100. Here are a few items on the list:

• The Onion
  
• Grammar
  
• Outdoor Performance Clothes
  
• Bad Memories of High School
  
• Graduate School
  
• Threatening To Move To Canada
  
• New Balance Shoes
  
• Marathons
  
• Wine
  

Now Justin hates this site because he feels it's filled with hate. Take the show The Wire. I know quite a few people that will tell you this is the best show on TV. They all happen to be white. I find that amusing. However, the site claims people only like The Wire because they are pretentious.

That is, they pretend to like The Wire and proclaim it good because everyone else does.

And this is what offends Justin.

Because isn't it possible that people really do like the show because they really do think it's the best show, not because a few select people like the show and they want to join the bandwagon. It's much like the people who bought A Brief History of Time, one of the most successful science books ever published, who have, nevertheless, never read it.

Now I have said most people don't read Stuff White People Like so deeply to believe the criticism that may be dished out. They have the superficial view of "Oh god, I love marathons too" rather than delve into the article which talks about how such people are insufferable and how hard they work to train.

Indeed, the articles seemed aimed at people who know "white people" and really "white people" could be extended to highly educated folks. The reason "white" is used is because people often look at the US as black/white, and many of the things white people like, African Americans don't care for, even those that are in the highly educated bunch.

You see, the kind of person that looks at Stuff White People Like isn't even typically white. It's someone with education, who likes to read books, discuss topics amongst their friends, believe they live a life that befits the research they've done. This isn't red America.

But then who is on the web all time, looking for information, reading sites like reddit, trying to find information outside the mainstream? Generally the same folks that stumble on Stuff White People Like.

Although the author seems to have disdain, it's our short attention span that ignores the attitude expressed in these articles, though clearly Justin reads it carefully enough to be offended. Most skim through the titles and wonder "how are they so right about me?" and chuckle.

Is the argument reasonable? Are white people filled with the kind of pretense suggested by the articles? I don't think so. But it is aimed at people who want to poke fun at such white folks by pretending to be them. And for the people that it represents, well, for as much research as they do, they seem to take it all in stride as something humorous.

Roger Dodger

They said it was an off year for Roger Federer. He has 12 losses this year, which is nearly twice what he's had in the previous four years. It's strange to say that because Federer has reached the finals of three of four Grand Slam majors, and the semifinals of the other one.

To compare, Nadal reached two semifinals and two finals. Now, Nadal did win both those finals and beat Federer in the those finals.

Still, you wouldn't think a guy that reached three finals and a semifinal of the four majors was having a bad year. Such is the life of Roger Federer who people expect to win at least 2 of every 4 majors he's in. He's remarkably consistent, except that everyone expected Rafael Nadal to take that leap into transcendency.

Only no one told Andy Murray. While Nadal is the undisputed king of clay, and has become the best or perhaps the second best grass court player in the world, there are many more people who can give Nadal a run for his money on hard courts. For one, there's number 3 Novak Djokovic, who did just that against him in Cincinnati. For another, there's now Andy Murray, who I believe is one of the smartest, if not the smartest, male tennis player out there.

Most players have a one size fits all strategy. They play the same way against most people, and it usually does the trick. Many fewer things to think about this way, don't you know? Murray, on the other hand, seems to adjust his tactics to whoever he plays. All that thought makes it tough to decide how to play someone. First on Murray's list appeared to be world's number one, Rafael Nadal.

Now Nadal has a style that's bruising, and while it hurts others, it hurts himself in the process. He came into the US Open weary, but even a weary Nadal can beat most players. Except Murray. Murray used a combination of no pace and hard pace to throw Nadal off his game until, dare we say it, Nadal was frustrated and impatient, two traits that rarely define Nadal's game.

By outthinking and outplaying Nadal, many people, including myself, thought Murray had a good shot at beating Roger Federer. However, many others thought, with his strong victory over Novak Djokovic, that the four time consecutive winner of the US Open wasn't ready to concede his crown, that the hugeness of the moment, so familiar to Federer, and so new to Murray, would be enough to rile Murray. And perhaps the Roger Federer of old, the one that was so dominant, that seemed poised to knock Pete Sampras's record 14 majors into a footnote of history, might be back.

And with a superior serve and aggressive play, Federer put a 6-2 beatdown on Murray in the first set, bewildering the poor Scot, before he started to string a few points together. And when Murray had a chance to break, and failed to challenge a call that turned out to be clearly out, and then lead to a Federer hold instead of a Murray break, Murray's chances, which seemed to be decent, began to dim.

Federer managed to break in the second set as well, and with two sets firmly in hand, Federer started to really relax. He drop-shotted, he chipped and charged, he served and volleyed. Murray, who had been content to hit off-pace shots, hoping to elicit errors from Federer, found himself retreiving hard hit shots which only weeks ago had not made it inside the lines, which had let players that hadn't had a whiff of victory against Federer, feel they had a chance.

Murray, ranked number 6, wasn't really feeling sorry for himself. With a successful summer, he was ready to move up to number 4 in the world, ahead of Ferrer, ahead of Davydenko, guys who play consistent, guys who make the semifinals, but not guys who people seriously consider as potential winners of the majors. Murray was better than these guys, and finally, he strung enough victories, played confident enough tennis, played smart against good players, and pushed himself ahead of those guys to be number 4 in the world. And he's had 2 victories over Djokovic. Though he lacks the bruising precision of the 3 players ahead of him, he plays with his brains, and perhaps soon, the power and precision will come for Murray too.

He's only 21, after all, much like the power youth movement. Nadal, 22, Djokovic, 21, trying to fend off the youth of 19 like del Potro or Querrey or Nishikori.

Meanwhile, Federer has asserted that he isn't quite ready to cede the mantle of king. Not yet, anyway. He's going to have to go back to the drawing table, figure out how to get his game to resemble years past, rather than the year that is. He's in a battle against time, to win 2 more majors before age gets to him, before the new kids start to draw even.

Federer's smiling now because he knows his time hasn't past yet, that the old man of tennis, at 27, still has some punch for the young'uns. Maybe he'll learn a lesson from Murray on how to play a Nadal, and maybe that will serve him well, lead him to a French title that is missing from his prodigious resume.

Who knows? The dream of break 14 majors that had been put on hold is now breathing life again, and that elegant player from Switzerland is all smiles. The year wasn't all bad, after all, don't you know. The golden boy of doubles took something positive and made one more golden trip to New York.

Murray Rolls

Rafael Nadal came into the US Open ranked number one for the first time coming into a major. He had gained number 1 when Roger Federer played poorly at the two master series tournaments in Toronto and Cincinnati, losing to Gilles Simon and Ivo Karlovic, respectively. Those losses, combined with Nadal's semifinal loss in Cincinnati (and win in Toronto) meant Nadal would become number one shortly after the Olympics concluded.

Players that have reached number 1 have traditionally had difficulty winning the next major they are entered. Perhaps it's the pressure, or the fatigue of having to play so many matches to get to number 1.

Coming into the US Open, there were the usual suspects of favorites. Federer was the four time defending champion. Roger had been having an off-year for him. He had nearly twice as many losses as he's ever had. He lost to Nadal badly in the French, then lost to Federer in a five set thriller, and then lost early in the next three tournaments he was in. Many people didn't think he had what it took to regain the title this year, despite having reached the semis of Australia, the finals of the French and Wimbledon.

Djokovic, who had a wonderful 2007, and played well in 2006 too, was becoming a solid number 3. When he won the Australian Open, many thought he might be poised to take number 2 from Nadal, and there were chances. But each time Djokovic had an opportunity, he faced Nadal, and Nadal held him off, and held to number 2.

And of course, there was Nadal, who had been the bridesmaid for so long, ranked number 2, until a series of hardcourt victories meant he would become number 1, replacing the magical Roger Federer, who suddenly wasn't himself.

Outside of the three favorites, a few other players were considered contenders. Andy Roddick was the only top player to forgo the Olympics and stay in the US to prepare. This turned out to be a little bit of disaster. In LA, Roddick lost in the final to unheralded Argentine, Juan Martin del Potro. It would turn out that del Potro would have a magical summer winning four tournaments in a row to head into the US Open.

Roddick then lost to Viktor Troicki, a Serbian who found himself in Washington DC when he discovered he wouldn't be in the Olympics after all. These losses encouraged Andy Roddick to make a break with his brother, and work with Patrick McEnroe who knew Andy's game because he was Davis Cup captain.

James Blake also plays best on hard courts. He missed out on a bronze medal, but beat Federer en route. His risky tennis has never lead him to the semifinals or finals of a major, but otherwise, he's quite tough.

But the real outside shot was Andy Murray. Fresh off a five set Wimbledon win over Richard Gasquet, but a drubbing by Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals, left Murray hoping for better results in the US. Hardcourts has always been Murray's best surface. He won the 2004 US Open juniors, the year Gael Monfils had won 3 of 4 junior Slams.

Murray reached the semifinals of Toronto, but lost to Nadal in straight sets. However, that tournament was a breakthrough of sorts because Murray beat Djokovic for the first time in Toronto. He would then win Cincinnati over Djokovic the following week. Djokovic had played a brilliant match to beat Nadal in the semifinals.

Murray barely escaped Jurgen Melzer, a hard hitting Austrian who had beaten Agassi back in the day. Murray stayed patient until Melzer started to cool down. When Murray played del Potro, who had been considered an up-and-comer, he took advantage of del Potro's on court time which had been a few hours longer than Murray, and Murray's fitness. En route to a straight set win, Murray found himself mired in the middle of a fourth set, but hit slice forehands, and off-pace shots, while moving around del Potro, trying to make fatigue del Potro's enemy.

del Potro eventually lost as he was too weary to chase down any more shots.

Against Nadal, Murray varied the pace, trying to open up hard hit forehands or down the line backhands. Two things helped Murray on the first day. First, Murray served fantastic. Nadal had a tough time tracking down Murray's serve. Second, Murray returns Nadal's serve better than nearly anyone. Murray stands 10-12 feet behind the baseline, then rushes up a few feet as Nadal serves.

Nadal had complained a bit about fatigue, but he's so good, and his opponents are often so intimidated trying to play Nadal that they play way above themselves, making numerous errors. While Murray's errors outnumbered Nadal's, his shots seemed very much in control.

Murray played lots of shots up the middle, to remove the angle that Nadal likes to work with. Murray also knows that Nadal doesn't like to give away points, so if Murray were to play shots up the middle, Nadal was content exchanging shots, rather than go for an ill-advised winner. Murray himself would then look for a short-ish ball to try to open up the court.

Murray was serving so well the first two sets that Nadal didn't see any break points, while Murray had broke twice in the first set, then had to work his way to a tiebreak, before winning that.

In the third set, Nadal got up an early break before the rains came. Most people felt the break would help Nadal who would get coaching and try something different. Indeed, Nadal became more aggressive the next day, while Murray was not nearly as hot, having some troubles returning serve, and dumping easy shots into the net. As both players held serve, Nadal took the third set, 6-4.

The fourth set had a very long game where Nadal staved off 7 break points, and eventually held on his second game point. That was to get to 1-all. Murray served, but his inability to break lead to some poorly played points, and Murray found himself a break down. Murray looked like he had simply collapsed and that he'd have to wait until the fifth set to recover. Nadal took the lead 2-1. Nadal then held to 3-1, and Murray needed his hold to 3-2.

At this point, Murray was feeling better again, and again started to work on Nadal. Murray used a combination of very deep shots, changes of paces and height, to cause Nadal to make errors he's not accustomed to. Murray eventually broke back to tie the match.

Murray was up 5-4 with Nadal serving. Murray was at deuce, and played a long point where he would hit the ball inside out. Nadal, rather than go for a winner, hit a hard shot somewhere between down the line and down the middle. Murray could have gone for the winner. Instead, he looped it crosscourt, forcing Nadal to have to reach up. He then hit another shot inside out, and then another crosscourt. Eventually, he hit a shot inside out, and attacked the net. By that point, Nadal was a bit fatigued, and gave Murray an easy volley. Nadal was really tired, more than he usually ever is.

On the next point, Nadal got a short ball and decided to drop shot, probably showing more evidence of fatigue. Murray ran the shot down, hit the pass, and got himself into the finals.

Murray played a very intelligent match, using tools to his advantage. In particular, Murray has a very compact backhand. He can hit down the line very accurately, as well as hit a powerful crosscourt shot. This makes his backhand versatile and dangerous, and he doesn't need much time. Even when Nadal managed to hit a hard forehand that forced Murray to run, Murray has such great defensive skills that he invariably made Nadal have to hit another shot he didn't expect.

Credit Murray with coming back and playing a solid match against Nadal when Nadal came out more aggressive, and looked like he had mentally beaten Murray. However, it turned out it was Nadal who was beaten.

Rarely do you see a player like Murray who adjusts how he plays to his opponents. More often than not, you see a Nadal-like player, who plays the same way, regardless of opponent.

Now Murray sees if he can be the roadblock to Federer winning his 13th major and his fifth US Open in a row. Federer got a day's rest and is hoping that he can find the same magic that allowed him to play the best match he's played since Wimbledon against Novak Djokovic. However, Djokovic lost to Murray twice, and now Murray's beaten a guy he's never beaten before in Nadal. Can Federer figure out a way to beat Murray before Federer really does get too old?

The answers will be found out Monday when the finals are played.

The Dumbing Down of American Politics

Sean Penn recently complained that both Democrats and Republicans are playing politics (duh!) and that America deserves better than either party. Or something to that effect.

There are a bunch of reasons for this, but there are two reasons: first, many Americans simply don't care about politics. It's all about politicians trying to look good, make their opponent look bad, and spend money for special interests. Yes, everyone does that. When folks worry about the latest football, basketball, baseball game, trying to pay rent, dealing with their job, paying for gas, then these issues matter to them very little. It's homework for most people to even know what politicians do.

Thus, we get simplified politics. And in the world of simplified politics (sorry to hear the passing of Don LaFontaine, who did that voice, though he wasn't the original one that Jerry Seinfeld used in his trailer), the idea is to treat political parties like sports teams. It's even worse than the worst rivalries you can imagine.

Red Sox-Yankees, Redskins-Cowboys, Duke-UNC, Michigan-Ohio State? Nothing compares to Democrats-Republicans.

I have to say I'm not immune to this. I find Sarah Palin's voice like listening to nails on chalkboard. The Republicans have a simple strategy which is to sling mud and then make up credentials. They criticize Governor Tim Kaine for a lack of experience, being a mayor of a tiny city, then turn around and say Palin with even less experience, being even mayor of a smaller town is not qualified.

Here's the funny thing. Republican talking heads know they are doing this, and they do it because they think Americans are stupid. And you know what? It doesn't matter. Because people have picked teams, and they can't stand the other team. How much loyalty is that?

You can literally point to places where Republicans say one thing when it's a Democrat and another when it's a Republican. Worse still, these points are handed out to Republicans to say everywhere so everyone stays on the same message as if this thought were somehow original. Jon Stewart continuously points this out, but brand loyalty is hard to squash.

Machiavelli once said it is better to be feared than to be loved. The corollary is that it is better to hate your opponent than to love your friend. Hate transcends love always.

Democrats have taken to similar strategies, but have avoided really heavy hitting stuff. They don't criticize McCain's leaning on his POW past, his involvement in the Keating Five, his soundbite of drill for oil to turn around his campaign, his cheating on his first wife, his embrace of Bush even as Bush insinuated McCain had fathered an illegitimate child in their 2000 run for presidency.

Obama has tried to claim the high ground. He argued that removing the gas tax in the summer (of 17 cents) was silly, that drilling was silly. It is! But Americans think there are easy solutions everywhere. Drill more and our problems are solved. And Republicans look for strategies to win. They accuse Democrats of this, but they are far more interested in winning.

They've done it in a variety of ways, the most common being trying to make Democrats look wimpy. Republicans like to feel tough and independent (despite being poor). The other factor is religion. Although Jimmy Carter was the first evangelical to run for President, he was an anomaly by being both smart and Democrat (by smart, I mean he has an advanced degree; his political savvy wasn't so good).

You can blame Bush for this kind of strategy. Bush trotted out the Willie Horton ad. Bush, Jr. merely followed the same tactics (remember Swift Boats).

The thing is many a Democrat would love to sling back, hitting hard on Republicans, except what works on the average Republican voter doesn't work on the average Democratic voter (is there such a thing?).

And that it has come down to this kind of petty bickering is because the level of discourse has been dragged down by Fox News, the Republicans, etc. And it's been dragged down because it works.

As Ron Paul tries to run an alternate convention, no one much covers it because it would give credibility to some other viewpoint. Rather than create a democracy of ideas, we are given the autocratic two-party system with one sides fighting dirty as they've done time and again.

Even Democrats rail against their own, vilifying Nancy Pelosi for lacking the will to stop the war, giving Bush whatever he wants in the hopes that the elections will swing Democrat and maybe she can do some of the things she actually promised.

We deserve better, but it ain't coming any time soon.

Tennis Update

I was going to blog about politics, but I don't have anything coherent to say. I only say that most people don't really understand politics (including me) and so they either perpetuate the spin or the fall for it. Spin is when the other side does something wrong and your crucify them for it, but when your side does something wrong, you find excuses.

Instead, I'll talk about tennis, and rather than talk about the US Open which is going on right now, I'll talk about my own tennis.

Tennis is a hard enough sport that it takes a lot of work to improve. Most people don't care that much about improving. They simply care about playing. I don't know why that is, but there you have it.

Lately, to improve, I've been taking tennis lessons. As much as I read about tennis, I can only self analyze so much. Having a second pair of eyes can help quite a bit. The big drawback is how much lessons cost. However, I figure I only have a handful of years for me to play better tennis before age really starts to catch up with me. So the money part doesn't bother me so much.

The latest lesson I've learned is the volley. I've generally been a "good" volleyer meaning I can get my racquet on the ball. But my volleys always float, and never have much power. I always attributed it to not swing hard enough. Little did I know that there were other factors hurting my volley.

In particular, I had an incorrect perception. The key to a good volley is not to use the arm too much. Instead, you want to turn your body sideways and let the torso do the work. That way, your arm is pretty steady, and provides a much stronger base to hit the shot. What a difference that makes! Volleys that used to float now have some pace to it. I can't say I understand the physics of it, but somehow using too much arm actually makes the volley weaker. I wonder if players in the 40s made that mistake too (I was watching some video of tennis in those days and volleys looked awfully weak).

I'm starting to get a bit more power in my forehand, at the cost of missing more, but for now, that seems like an OK tradeoff. I'm still trying to figure out how to use my body more on my forehand instead of arming the ball so much.

Alas, my wrist and shoulder have been bothering me lately. I probably should give my body a more serious rest.

Obama-lama

I caught about half of Obama's acceptance speech last night, which was held in a football stadium in Denver. Like many things in politics, where the stakes are so high, things are planned and planned and planned.

Spontaneity isn't permitted because a politician could find themselves in a George Allen moment spewing out obscure invectives on a Indian-American ("macaca") and having it taped and YouTubed. Being a politician where the media follows you 24-7 is like being in Big Brother. At some point, you let your guard down, you forget the camera is on you, and you say things you'd normally say, but which would be far too offensive for the delicate ears of Americans.

We're always looking for the one negative thing to hang out hats on, to give us some reason to dislike someone.

On the flip side, with preparation, one needs to hit a laundry list of points. Obama had to show he was tough ("kill bin Laden"), that he'd go after terrorists, that he was worried about the economic future. These were the substance points. He then wanted a classy way to go after McCain, who accused Obama of being less than patriotic, which compelled Obama to wear a, sigh, flag pin (why not a Uncle Sam tophat).

The outdoor venue was made to feel like indoors, with a near presidential setup, as if he were addressing the nation from, if not the White House, then at least some place of stature. The only evidence that this was outdoors, other than the frequent pannings to the throngs of people scattered throughout, looking at Obama, the gladiator, was the wind, that cooperatively blew the flag from time to time.

The Daily Show filmed hours before the speech made fun of this in a prescient way by saying "Obama brought out the sun", which itself was a joke about when the segment was taped, but also the kind of magic Obama was expected to elicit.

A few days ago, I heard a woman exclaim on radio, that she had not been a support of Obama until she heard Michelle Obama, and that her speech felt genuine to her. Let's face it, speechmakers have had a long time to practice their talking. This isn't to say it isn't genuine, only that public figures going to sound a lot better than the average Joe, Jose, or Josephina.

It's why you watch a movie with good actors. They're so good, you forget they are acting, but you realize they are acting, because if you put a camera in front of regular people living their lives, you'd be bored senseless, and wonder why these folks "couldn't act". Actors give an amped up version of reality, pushing the emotion buttons to 11 or more.

Politicians do the same. Obama, in this respect, is old school. Once upon a time, our best orators inspired us with elevated rhetoric. We knew they knew more words than we did. After a while, we ceded (did we ever have it?) the mantle to the Brits who have always been much more polished at extemporaneous speaking than us poor schlubs.

Speakers like McCain and Dole and even Shrub prefer a more folksy style fraught with verbal gaffes that make them seem like one of us, despite the immense wealth each of these guys (Dole possibly excepting) have.

We get the politics we deserve because most of us, frankly, don't understand the complexity of politics, nor care. This is the kind of populace China wants--docile, unaware, only there to serve the greater glory of the main government. Were the public more knowledgeable, the debates might be more substantive. But realize that even the more intelligent amongst us prefer watching movies that move us, rather than those that merely tickle the intellect, but leave us feeling empty.

Americans look at politicians and try to imagine them as people. They don't look at them like they might a doctor. A doctor with bad bedside manners might be perfectly acceptable if he can save your life. A president with bad manners, well, he'd never be president in the first place, at least, not now, because the public watches his every move.

People harken back to days of Lincoln and Douglas when both ran for the Senate (Douglas won, by the way) and criss-crossed the Illinois landscape, giving half hour speeches on many a different topic, speeches thought out in length. Was the average American more knowledgeable then? Or perhaps the politicians didn't care, their level of discourse was high enough to satisfy themselves, public be d*mned.

Ultimately, though, the proof is in the pudding. The actions of a leader matter, rather than the speech making. Yet, this is why Clinton was so popular. Great speech writers combined with humor, a bit of anger, enough to show this guy wasn't going to put up with Republican shenanigans even as he was involved in his own.

To that end, Obama gave a speech that tried to be noble, above board, respectful, and hopefully, the sound of that, the weight of that, will offset the typical Republican playbook who would find reasons to slander Jesus if He were anti-American.

Perhaps the Republicans will sound trite and petty, and people will heed the words of Dennis Kucinich, relegated to a mid-afternoon speech, when he urged attendees to "Wake Up, America".

Obama's speech that looked forward drew inspiration by looking back, by taking the sentiment of Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and showing us the words and people that influenced Obama.

Understated, elegant, authoritative.

More Matthew Mitcham

I've read some comments about Matthew Mitcham's gold medal. There's been complaints that NBC did not choose to mention Mitcham's orientation in the broadcast. They did say that he had quit diving for a while due to depression.

Many people say what does his sexual orientation have to do with his diving as justification for not mentioning it. However, it seems obvious many things are mentioned that have very little to do with athletic prowess. The most obvious, and it's obvious it's simply organized this way, is the nationality of the athlete. Does Bolt being Jamaican have anything to do with his running? What about Phelps being American? Or that he's from Baltimore? Or that his mother is divorced? Or that he had ADD as a kid?

To be fair, Mitcham may not have been the favorite, but there's one undeniable fact. With over 11,000 athletes, he was the only out male, and one of ten gay athletes (the rest were women). Statistics would say that there are far more gay athletes competing in the Olympics, and yet no one is willing to admit it out of fear, either fear because their home country is too repressive, or at the very least, fear that they will lose endorsement money.

This is still a real fact of life. Martina Navratilova, perhaps the most famous of gay athletes, had a tough time getting endorsements after she admitted she was gay. Greg Louganis, who only came out after he retired, had similar issues, especially considering how decorated he was as a diver.

It might be fair to point out that Mitcham is Australian, and had he been American, there would have been more press about it. I suspect that is true indeed. Then, he would have announced he was out in the US. I think it was occasionally mentioned that Rudy Galindo was an out gay male figure skater.

It's funny because I suspect people think that one of David Boudia or Thomas Finchum or both American divers were gay, but again, they've never mentioned it.

The point is that people try to trivialize these matters saying it has nothing to do with athletics, but if that's the case, then why bother talking about girlfriends and spouses during the Olympics? What do they have to do with anything? They have to do with the emotional support of the athlete.

Mitcham credits many people with helping him get through a difficult time in his life, including his partner, Lachlan Fletcher. They needed sponsors to help fly both his mother (his mum) and his partner out to the Olympics, and they needed to get him there as an assistant of sorts. At the very least, it was mentioned in Australian press, so rare it is for a diver to get gold in Australia.

Indeed, Mitcham's past is fascinating outside his orientation. In particular, he used to be compete in trampoline before he was apparently discovered by an Australian diving coach of Chinese origin. (Coincidentally, trampoline is now an Olympic event). Matthew competed in both as a teen before focusing on diving.

There was a focus on Usain Bolt from Jamaica. However, the 100m and 200m is something Americans have traditionally done well and so there's interest in watching a Jamaican do well. The kind of exuberance that Bolt showed is not so different from what an American might do either, and with plenty of Jamaicans living in the US, it's perhaps not surprising that Americans might adopt Bolt as one of their own.

Contrast this with the Kenyan and the Ethiopian and Moroccan trying to win the marathon. The marathon is not typically filled with name American athletes, who often fare poorly at the longer distances. Americans, even African Americans, don't relate well to Africans from Africa, probably imagining them to be some weird running freak that speaks in clicks. Usain, on the other hand, seems like a nice T.O., a bit of a showboat.

This goes to show that a guy like Mitcham can be appreciated, given how much time NBC spent on Boudia and Finchum who both had relatively poor Olympics for the Americans. However, to celebrate Mitcham too much would be to delve into topics that NBC didn't feel comfortable dealing with.

And so it's sad that they had to ignore something and that there are people who back this decision up.

Mitcham's orientation was worth mentioning because so few other athletes would step up and do the same, and to at least acknowledge this would go a little way to saying that this social problem should be a thing of the past.

Bill Walton

Bill Walton seems like a blowhard making obvious points during basketball games.

However, it seems, his life as an undergraduate basketball player as part of the John Wooden dynasty at UCLA seems fascinating.

Walton grew up in a family that was taught to fight in what they believed in. He joined protests, spoke his mind, and argued with his own coach. Wooden was an old-fashioned coach who believed the team needed discipline from the littlest thing such as putting on socks, tying shoes, and making sure their hair was cut close to the head and there was no facial hair. He believe discipline in day to day life translated to discipline on court.

It seems quaint, but people still make their players do the same thing today (Manny Rodriguez, formerly of the Red Sox, joined the Dodgers and was told by the coach to cut his hair--he did so, but only a touch, and certainly not in the spirit of what was expected).

In any case, it's interesting how activism seems to have disappeared, mostly through taunting and a growing conservatism in politics, and perhaps the thought that mere protest was not enough, that anger wasn't efficient.

But during the day, even an athlete as prominent as Bill Walton who, these days, would be in line for huge contracts and would be told to stop raising ruffles, then joined protests because it was important to him just as it was important to many other people on campus.

What ever happened to that idealism?

Water Cube

One of the highlights of the Chinese Olympics was architectural. The "water cube" is basically built with an exo-skeleton that looks like honeycombs or molecular shapes. A bit question was what to put inside the exo-skeleton. Quickly ruled out was glass, which was simply too heavy.

The answer was ETFE, a plastic using technology based on teflon. This plastic is very thin, as thin as plastic that you might put photos in. Yet, it is also strong. There were two big fears: fire and earthquake. Turns out ETFE doesn't burn, it melts. You can put a blowtorch to it, and it begins to drip. Remove the blowtorch, and it stops melting. Thus, you wouldn't see the structure catch fire.

The other fear was earthquake, and they had to show that the structure could withstand that.

The Chinese looked to an Australian firm to help design the structure, while they built it.

The Chinese not only wanted to showcase their athletes but the architectural marvels. To be fair, they did it at a hefty price, but price seemed no object.

Still an interesting idea.

Matthew Mitcham wins gold

OK, so someone is going to win gold, right? Why pick Matthew Mitcham. He's not American. He's Australian.

The world of athletics, despite the closeness of competitors, is still rather homophobic. Out of the 11,028 competitors only 10 are out, and of those, only 1 is male. That male, as you might have guessed, is Matthew Mitcham.

There has been, for example, no out active male basketball, football, or baseball player. There are no out male tennis players that I know of. There have been several women: Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Conchita Martinez, Gigi Fernandez, and Amelie Mauresmo. Still, there are likely many others that haven't come out.

Most people are scared of what happens to their advertising opportunities if they come out.

Although this is likely not to make huge news, the way Michael Phelps made news, the way Usain Bolt made news, the way the "Redeem Team" made news, such a trait, so incidental to the competition, but so fundamental to who Mitcham is should serve notice that it's OK to be out.

The Olympics claims to be the ideal of competition, but it should also allow competitors the freedom to be who they are too.

Phelps on SI

Sports Illustrated decided to reproduce a famous photo of Mark Spitz when he won 7 gold medals back in 1972. Spitz had a prototypical American hunk look. That is, he looked like Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds back when a moustache meant virility rather than its modern perception as something out of an old porn movie, which now goes by the moniker, pornstache.

The picture has Phelps wearing all 8 medals giving a toothy grin, and people then realize, athletes, as much as their bodies reflect their extreme athletic prowess, may or may not be attractive in traditional poses. Phelps has been accused of being dorky in that photo, he does look pretty dorky.

At times, Phelps can look rather striking, mostly when he is looking intense in the pool, rather than when he's all smiles.

But the point is this, and it's interesting to point out.

Why do we care?

To be fair, the old adage, sex sells, works. It doesn't hurt that fit athletes are often attractive. Sure, things can compensate. Usain Bolt isn't particularly handsome, nor is he particularly ugly. He cuts a striking figure because he's tall and the guy showboats. He really enjoys his wins, and therefore, we enjoy his wins.

Women have a higher standard to achieve. Sometimes, women's good looks are enough to be the difference. A sexy javelin player might be the Anna Kournikova of her field, unable to win the big medals, but easy on the eyes.

Perhaps the commentary on how good Phelps looks is a matter of what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Women have been scrutinized for their looks for so long, so maybe a guy, as accomplished as Phelps was during this year's Olympics, has critical eyes that eye his physique, and the odd absence of swim trunks as if the photo was taken while he was in the buff.

We celebrate the accomplishments of athletes, but in the end, one reason they are so loved, beyond their physical prowess is their physical appearances. Due to rigorous training, outside of powerlifters and pre-teens, athletes are thin, strong, and yes, even attractive, even amongst themselves (thus, the need for prodigious condoms for the athletes discrete non-competitive activities).

The Thrill of Surprise

The reason sports needs to be live is the thrill of the unknown. Unfortunately, with the Olympics all the way around the world, many events that are being played out in China during the evening are happening in the morning in the US, when most fans are at work. NBC tries to hide this, even though, with the ubiquity of web news, you can find results as fast as they come available.

For many hours, sports websites said Usain Bolt of Jamaica had not only pulled off the rare 100m-200m double, winning both events, but did so both in world record time. The last time an athlete won both events was Carl Lewis in 1984. Bolt broke Michael Johnson's record in the 200m from 1996 which he ran in 19.32. Bolt ran it in 19.30 seconds.

Johnson ran then 200m and 400m, so the 200m is the common event between Johnson and Bolt. Johnson had not expected Bolt to run so fast. Unlike his grandstanding in the 100m, Bolt took this event seriously realizing only his fastest run would break the world record.

To keep the thrill for those who had otherwise managed to avoid the Internet, NBC did not refer to the race in the past tense until it was over.

NBC had tried to use its muscle to move events like swimming to the mornings so it could show those events live, at least on the east coast. There's a sense NBC delays the games even more for viewers throughout the US.

Although it lacks honesty, it does preserve some sense of surprise, so I'm not entirely upset that it happens.

On Relationships

I was talking to a friend who was taking a small vacation from his wife, or more properly, his wife was taking a small vacation from him (mutually agreed upon) and asked him to reflect on marriage.

I was thinking that many couples look forward to kids then to raising kids. Despite this, it seems to lack enough drama that movies are devoted to the hardships of raising kids. It's difficult to convey the joy a smiling baby gives to a parent, the simple progress that seem like major achievements to parents, the tantrums thrown that exasperate parents. So many couples go through it, and yet it's not something movie makers want to deal with. They prefer the romance of a male and female where love is the ideal and responsibility is given the short shrift as it changes a fairy tale to a harsh reality.

One issue brought up was the sharing of responsibility. It made me wonder whether such a thing was particular to "western" cultures. Of course, women make many decisions on the upbringing of a child, but there are other issues, often revolving around money and how its spent, or possibly the future of the child or whose job child-rearing belongs to.

Once upon a time, the wife was expected to raise the child by herself, the husband to busy with "important" work to deal with changing the baby, watching after the baby, and so forth. Maybe as the child grew older, the father would teach the boy to throw a ball, to catch a ball, and so forth. Husbands often issued decrees that they wanted their wives to obey. Given that some cultures gave no freedom to the wife--she could not get her own job, divorce was frowned upon or worse, the wife often had little choice. Even under such constraints, she experienced some joy in seeing the child grow up.

These days, the wife now contributes to many decisions that the husband might traditionally have had, even to the point that husbands sometimes defer to the wife on these decisions. Phrases like "I need to check with my wife" replace "I need to check with my husband" and shows the increasing importance of wives to modern relationships.

Because wives now have more power in the relationship, once dynamic has appeared that was perhaps less common before. When wives were subservient to their husbands, they were told, from youth, that their role was to keep their husbands happy. Their own happiness was secondary. He would provide for the family, and she would support him. In some jobs, this still happens. Husbands that coach sports find that their success depends on the team's success and that the team's success requires an inordinate amount of time spent preparing the team, time that is not spent with the wife. A coach's wife is expected to understand that this time is required, and to be patient, supporting the husband, and perhaps providing advice and food for the team. Coaches' wives often hang out with one another since only such wives understand each other's dilemma.

With the increased power of women, one change that has occurred is that women who once were asked to support the husband now can think more about themselves. They might expect their husbands to be their emotionally for them to stand by them even when it may not be wise to do so (I'm reminded that actress Delta Burke had said something negative about someone else, and her husband backed her up, even if there was some indication that maybe Burke wasn't telling the full truth).

This observation is purely anecdotal (as are most of my observations), but it's lead me to observe that American women are sometimes more likely to be emotionally fragile and thus more demanding of their male counterparts. This has lead to phrases like "high maintenance". This isn't to say that men can't be high maintenance too.

To be low maintenance means that you have to be self-assured and independent and thinking of others. Conservative cultures seem to tell women, essentially, to suck it up, and put aside their feelings for the sake of the relationship. Men tend to do that anyway, because despite the increasing balance between men and women, men are still expected to be "in charge" (but taking lots of opinions from wives).

I raise this issue because I am pondering whether conservative cultures, despite their downsides, have some redeeming features that aren't obvious, and this seems to be one of them.

Why Team Sports Are More Popular

The top sports in the US are football, basketball, and baseball. Why are team sports so popular? And I mean popular among sports pundits, who devote hours to talking sports.

Here's a recent example. Brett Favre was the disgruntled football player from Green Bay. Each year, he'd ponder whether he'd come back or not. He'd string the media and his team long. Most years, he came back and played yet another year. Why did people care?

Because people stay loyal to teams, not to the people on the team. When Brett Favre is wearing your uniform, he's your guy, supporting your city or supporting you because you chose that team, as many people liked the Bulls because Michael Jordan played on the Bulls.

Team sports aren't simply more popular because there are lots of players thus increasing the number of people to talk about, but because there's a relationship between the team, the coaches, and even management. Players can be picked to play on a team or not, so someone is making a decision. You can ask if that decision is wise or not.

You can debate whether a player is good in the clutch or not, whether he played a poor shot at a crucial moment, whether he's selfish, whether he's the best ever, whether he can beat your team or not. People often debate whether coaches should have total control over the team or not. Joe Torre wanted Manny Ramirez to cut his hair. It's amazing that baseball controls its players to this degree that they worry about their haircuts, but they do, and the funny thing is, most sports pundits say that's OK.

Indeed, many fans believe that coaches should have absolute power, and so do many sports pundits. Coaches, outside of Isiah Thomas, are often seen as the braintrust, and must reign in the team. If a player is not following rules, he's seen as a prima donna, someone disrupting the team, and told to shut up. Great players are told to toe the line because it's good for the team. They are cogs in a great machine and should be dispensed if they act up, act individually.

Indeed, sports commentators spend hours talking about misbehaving players and the effect all their own talk has on the team's psyche. It might have no effect if they didn't blah blah blah about it. Is Terrell Owens behavior hurting the team? Well, if the media didn't cover him, he would have no medium to pander to, and then he wouldn't have anything to say. But the sports pundits have to talk about something, so they love TO, or they love to hate him.

Individual sports?

Individual sports are personality based. Tiger Woods doesn't play for a team. He plays for himself. People watch because he's so good. The only personality I can recall that got attention for stuff outside the sport is Mike Tyson, whose jail time, ear biting, tattoo wearing all lead to a lot of coverage of Tyson's life outside of boxing.

As good as Tiger Woods is, the problem is that people have a hard time talking about him full time. They can say how great he is, and they do that a lot, but he doesn't get the kind of attention Brett Favre does because he doesn't play for a team. There isn't player-team dynamics. The closest equivalent might be to play for something like Ryder Cup, but because the average sports fan only cares about regular titles, even as prestigious an event as the Ryder Cup pales by comparison to the big individual events.

I suppose pundits could opine about how Tiger should play Ryder Cup (he does). The closest whining that goes on, and it goes on all the time, is Michelle Wie playing the women's tour. However, it leads invariably to the same comments again and again. Beat other women. Stop playing against men. It's a gimmick, and you aren't beating anyone this way. But people still talk about her.

Roger Federer, on track to being the best player ever has been derailed by himself and the Nadal machine, and heck, even Rafael Nadal are two players most people don't even know. Find a sports show and ask them to spend an hour talking about Rafa, and they're stuck. They can say how great he is, but that lasts five minutes.

Another thing that helps team sports in the US is a post-season. Other places in the world don't have a great notion of post-season. So if you can't talk about a player, you can talk about how a particular team will do, and whether they will make the post-season, and people will talk about who is going to make it.

The discussion for tennis is "Nadal is likely to win the US Open, with Djokovic and Murray as outside chances, and Federer, del Potro, and Blake as even further outside choices". That might be it, and that's if you even follow tennis. When it comes to actual team play, you can finally talk about all its players, whether this player being injured matters, how they can do when certain players are slumping or injured, how a returning player will help the team or not.

Now, there are things that resemble team sports but are effectively not team sports. Namely, cycling. For all the talk about Lance Armstrong and his seven wins, the fact of the matter is that cycling is a team sport, but it's the most individual of team sports. In effect, the rest of the team serves as a huge windshield and do various duties to fend off other teams attacks.

They are the offensive line to the main cyclist's quarterback which is why, as important as the offensive line is to a quarterback's success, they don't do enough to make their play interesting enough to talk about.

Indeed, in football, there's only a handful of player positions people talk about. Quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and occasionally a cornerback or some defensive player and the kicker. The offensive line, the punter, etc. don't get much talk.

So these are kinds of questions you can debate with team sports. How's the team doing? Are there players that they should get to replace the ones now? How are the star players playing? Is there an injury? How good is the strategy by the coach? Is some player acting up, trying to act defiant? Is some player going to retire? what's the chances of making the post-season? Can team X beat team Y? Is player X the best player ever? Is this team the best ever? Are the new rules affecting the sports adversely? Is the new owner too meddlesome? Is the new coach the answer to the team's problems? How well are they adjusting to this new player joining the team?

In other sports? You can't ask nearly this many questions. There isn't the same season long drama. Tennis and golf are one-off tournaments and are completely optional to players. If some player doesn't want to play a tournament, they don't have to. Team sports force players to play a schedule and there's question whether they should play hurt or not. In sports like golf or tennis, you can simply rest and not play, even if, in theory, you can play. In team sports, you are told you need to play, even if hurt, and then there's discussion about how tough you are to play with injury.

This is why it's hard for individual sports to be discussed. There's just less to talk about overall. Teams also tend to moderate any one great player where individual sports often have dominating individual players. In a team sport, you can often have seemingly weak teams do enough to create a huge upset.

It's sad but true.

NBC recaps

I'm watching USA network which is covering tennis. They are one of like five networks covering the Olympics including CNBC, MSNBC, the Oxygen network, and NBC itself. They re-televised the call for the 4 by 100 medley relay. What you see is that, after the third leg, the Americans are just ahead of the Japanese, with the Australians behind them, but then the Japanese guy is just fading, especially on the back half. The Japanese guy is, for about the first 25 m, ahead of Australia, but at 50m, he's in third, and is fading towards fourth at the end.

So the most successful group of four would have been Peirsol for backstroke, Kitajima in breaststroke, Phelps in the butterfly, and finally Eamon Sullivan in freestyle. This would have maybe cut the total time by a second overall.

Recap on the 4 by 100 team medley

Well, a little over four hours after I missed the live 4 by 100 medley, NBC finally has it up, and I was able to watch the relay. As it turns out, the medley, despite the US never losing this event before, was much, much closer than I'd expected.

The event started off with Peirsol, a backstroker. He was a touch slow, perhaps due to an injury, but nonetheless had the lead leg on both ends (at 50m then at 100m). In the second leg, Brendan Hansen swam breaststroke. Actually, the Japanese swimmer, Kitajima, managed to take the lead.

At this point, as the best butterfly swimmer, Phelps swam the third leg. While Phelps is good at 200m, he is weaker on the 100m, and at 50m, the Australian, Lauderstein actually outtouched Phelps. But Phelps moved ahead and touched ahead of Australia.

That left the last leg to Jason Lezak who anchored the 4 by 100 freestyle medal to barely edge out France by 0.04 seconds, catching up to Alain Bernard at the very end squeaking out a victory for the United States, and at the time, giving Phelps his second gold medal (the 4 by 200m freestyle relay was far more comfortable, the US being stronger at the longer distances). He had to fight off Eamon Sullivan of Australia, with a half a body length lead, and kept this lead all the way to the end.

Let's take stock of how it actually happened to the second.

The United States lead off with Aaron Peirsol, who lead the leg with backstroke at 53.16 seconds. This was apparently half a second off his record. At this point, the Russians were closest, with Arkady Vyatachanin at 53.36 seconds or just two-tenths behind.

The next leg was Brendan Hansen, who was the slow leg for the Americans, in breaststroke. He had a time of 59.27 seconds for his leg. Meanwhile, Kosuke Kitajima won this leg at 58.07 or more than a full second ahead. He was clearly the class of the field for this stroke, and actually touched ahead of Hansen. The Australians, at this point, were just 0.03 seconds behind. The Japanese had actually gotten half a second ahead of the Americans, but most felt they didn't have the back two swimmers to mount a serious challenge.

The next leg was Michael Phelps, swimming butterfly. At the split, the Australians were ahead, lead by Andrew Lauterstein, who had a great start. Phelps, however, regained the lead, and finished his leg at 50.15 seconds, to Lauterstein's 51.03 seconds, thus gaining back that strong lead. Indeed, by being nearly a second back, the Japanese also managed to make up time, with Takuro Fujii swimming at 50.89, or about a tenth of a second ahead.

At this point, the Americans had a total time, over three legs at 162.58 seconds, the Japanese had 162.83 seconds, and the Australians had 163.39. Indeed, because Lauterstein had faded badly in the butterfly, it allowed the Japanese butterfly swimmer, Fujii, to finish with a better time then Australia, and because Japan had the overall lead after the breaststroke in the second leg, they would still have the lead over Australia in the third.

Finally, Jason Lezak anchored the last leg. He swam in 46.76 which was actually a tenth of a second slower than Eamonn Sullivan at 46.65 seconds. However, as I just noted, Australia about 0.8 seconds slower after the third leg and had to make up 0.8 seconds, and only made up 0.1 seconds.

Japan was the team that really suffered on the freestyle. At 48.35 seconds, Sato was not only slower than Australia's Sullivan and American Lezak, he was also slower than everyone else swimming the freestyle that didn't disqualify (Italy was disqualified). Even so, that means he only swam less than 2 seconds slower than Sullivan. Because of the strong three legs swam by the first three Japanese swimmers, even this dismal swim meant a reasonably comfortable bronze.

To be honest, if the Japanese had a decent freestylist, even someone that swam two or three tenths seconds slower than Lezak, they could have won silver (alas, that would be pretty quick, as only Cam Gibson of New Zealand had that kind of time).

The final time was Americans at 3:29.24, followed closely by the Australians at 3:30.04, and the Japanese team that faded badly at 3:31.18, which still had nearly a second cushion over Russia.

The margin of victory was just under a second, and while that looks very close, at this distance (400m), it's still a pretty comfortable lead (800 m can stretch those leads out even further).

Surprisingly, there is no 4 by 200m medley relay nor an 800m individual medley, which would probably favor the Americans and Phelps in both cases, as he's a stronger swimmer in longer distances.

Congrats to the American team for making a world record, and helping Phelps win his eighth gold (in the two close team events, Lezak anchored the last leg to help secure the win).

Although the video should have been up as quick as possible, a few hours, while painful, is reasonably quick. Obviously, in this age of instant gratification, they could have put something together quickly in 10-20 minutes, but preferred to stitch together everything (the swim, the interviews, the medals) and publish that instead.

Eight is Enough

I had been planning to watch Phelps win his eighth medal, presumably gold, in the 4 by 100 team medley. But the problem was that I didn't know exactly when he'd be swimming. I thought it was close to midnight. Had I remembered accurately, I would have known it was close to 11 PM. I arrived at my place around 11:20 PM some 10 minutes after the event had concluded. I should have simply left what I was doing before 11 and watched it.

Silly me.

So I watched, I think, 6 of the 8 medal swims live or nearly so.

But here's the painful part. NBC could have it at the video site the minute it was over. Instead, I'll have to wait several hours, most likely into tomorrow morning, before I can view it in full. Sad that events like this which can be easily missed aren't ready the instant it is concluded. People who barely miss it like me could watch it.

I'm disappointed I didn't know when it was and couldn't watch it live.

Seven and Counting

Michael Phelps, Baltimore native, is still on his quest for eight gold medals. There were two events that Michael Phelps was dicey on actually getting gold. There was the 3 by 100 freestyle relay. The French were expected to be quite competitive. Indeed, they were leading with scant meters to go, before Jason Lezak caught up to Alain Bernard, one of the fastest freestylists in the world.

The other event that Michael wasn't favored was the 100m butterfly where he doesn't hold the world record. Indeed at 50m, he wasn't in the lead. But at the last instant, while Cavic was coasting to try to touch, Phelps swam another stroke and as he reached out, he hit the pad ahead of Cavic by 0.01 seconds

This gets him to seven golds, and leave the 4 by 100 team relay, where each competitor swims a different stroke (breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle, and backstroke). The traditional order is butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle.

It seems unreal how good Phelps is and that he is marching to destiny. He's tied Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals, and has a chance for eight.

Let's see if it happens.

Searching for Roger

James Blake is good player. He's top ten. He plays an aggressive baseline game where he takes chances. He beats opponents because he can hit a bit harder than they can, but if his game is off, then he runs into trouble.

In eight tries against Roger Federer, Blake had only ever won one set. He couldn't figure out how to beat Roger Federer. Typically, this means one player has confidence in his play and the other feels frustration.

But even Blake knew that people were whispering about Federer. He was no longer the same player. He had uncharacteristic losses early in the year, compounded by mono, and then got decimate in the French final. Even when he appeared to have his game together, he needed rain delays, and some great shots to force a fifth set with Nadal, and even then, he lost during the waning daylight.

He then lost to Gilles Simon with errors a plenty, then to the hard serving Ivo Karlovic. Still, Federer assured us, that he was fine, that the only thing that mattered was the Olympics and the US Open.

I saw a few points of Blake playing Simon. Blake had already beaten Simon in a match last week in Cincinnati. Simon is a very steady, quick player that can fetch enough balls, and make enough shots that he can beat most average players. Blake wins because he pressures Simon, making forcing shots setting himself up. And Blake appeared to be crisp. He was making those shots.

Although Roger managed to eke out a win over Berdych, he had a tough time with Berdych's serve. He looked like he was struggling more than he had to, which made me think that Blake, despite a dismal record, would feel he had a chance. And indeed, he played aggressive off the ground, and Federer looked very shaky chasing shots down.

While Federer has a good serve, he's never been the kind of ace machine Sampras was. Indeed, that made him a more interesting player to watch. But this creates problems. More likely than not, when Federer is in trouble, he can't serve an ace to get out of it. He did it at Wimbledon (somewhat), but it's important to get a few free points.

This meant Blake had chances in many games to stay in the point. Federer also doesn't like really long points. If he feels pressure, and Blake was applying it, then he goes on the offensive. However, once he does that, he begins to miss, tick the top of the net, as if he's waiting for the stars to align and he goes into a zone.

It's a peculiar tactic to say the least. One that says that it's better to have lots of errors than play tentatively. You would think, with practice, he'd aim more safer, make sure he wasn't getting so close to the lines. In other words, either be more accurate, or take fewer chances.

Rather than let Blake beat himself, Federer would give him points. To be fair, Blake was hitting well, and Federer probably felt a conservative playing style would cause Blake to make winners even more easily.

This isn't to say that Federer might not come around and win the US Open. He now has a few days to prepare (the bad news, in that respect, is that he's still playing doubles with Wawrinka, so he can't take a flight out of China right away) for the US Open that he wouldn't otherwise. He can certainly still practice in China (I guess) and see how that works for him.

Federer's practice routine was severely impacted when he got sick at the beginning of the year, and it seems to have hurt his game ever since. Now that he makes errors with 5-6 shots off the ground, a steady player can, in principle, just wait until this happens.

I think people want him to play better, to be competitive with Djokovic and especially Nadal. Part of the problem is how stubbornly he sticks to this style of play. You would think his manager and coach would simply tell him to look at the unforced errors and ask him if that's the way he should play. I suspect Federer is a stubborn man. He has been winning for so long by himself that he may take anyone else's advice with a grain of salt.

By the way, his manager is his girlfriend.

So what happens to Roger? No one expected his game to deteriorate like this, competitive enough to make finals, but then struggling as well. It's more instructive looking at the way he loses. It would be one thing if it were someone like Michael Chang where players simply learned to outhit him. But it feels like Roger is helping players out by missing so much, more than even average players miss.

Finding Phelps

You know what it's incredibly hard to do? You'd think with all the fuss NBC makes about Phelps they might actually put it up on their website. When Michael Phelps swims.

I want to know when the heats are, when the semifinals are, and when it's on TV.

Oh I know. NBC would prefer I sit in front of the television waiting all day to find when it is rather than tell me exactly when I should watch. It's sad, but true.

But you would think it would be so easy to do this. I have found a site, but it suggests that the heat I saw televised at noon was not live, which is fine. It doesn't have to be live.

One of these days, some site is going to figure it out, and let you know exactly when your favorite athlete is on, and then get that to you. In the meanwhile, we have to deal with this mess.

Which, by the way, a ton of sites that spew spam and such are perfectly willing to hijack whenever you try to locate the schedule of when Michael Phelps swims.

Stop being idiots and do the right thing.

Lessons

When I was 13 or so, my mother enrolled in me in local tennis lessons. They were held for two weeks, five days a week, for an hour each. In those days, it was probably quite cheap to get lessons. I'm sure it was about 20 dollars each for my brother and me to get lessons.

They were group lessons. The first year we were taught by some guy named Jay, I think. He had learned tennis at the Dennis Van der Meer camp. He was the guy who gained some notoriety coaching Billie Jean during her match against Bobby Riggs and became a contributor to Tennis Magazine. He thought he had boiled down playing tennis to a certain few key steps and if only you'd practice that, you'd get good.

In hindsight, he taught in something of a classic style. My first racquet for that class was an old wooden racquet that my dad had bought used, and we had another one that seemed like a cheap K-mart brand.

At the time, the two-hander was still something of a novelty. Despite some very high profile two-handers, Chris Evert, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, and some lesser players like Harold Solomon, it was still slowly making its way to tennis instruction. So I was taught to hit a one-handed shot. My brother read an article on Gene Mayer and how he hit his two-hander on both sides, and adopted that style for some time.

The following summer, we took lessons from Dave and Arnel. They were, at one point, on the tennis team, but had recently gone to college, and saw this as a summer job, teaching kids to play tennis. Dave was a good looking guy sort of the Mark Hamill type and Arnel seemed Filipino, and was there to assist and hang out.

I don't recall if we took lessons after that. Basically, after the first year, I was pretty much self-taught, which turned out OK in hindsight, but not great.

Although I learned tennis in the early 80s, I was trying to learn what was termed then and now as "modern" tennis, which meant a loopy forehand, open-stance shots, and so forth. I remember playing videotapes of Mats Wilander and Bjorn Borg (in an exhibition, no less) trying to imitate their shots, and later on, trying to imitate early Agassi. I tried the Lendl forehand.

What I didn't realize then was how faithful I was to their shots, which was, in hindsight, not very. Early on, I learned to hit pretty good topspin on my forehand, but switched to a two-hander, and could never get good topspin on that shot. I would hit a slice backhand too.

One thing that was a little unusual was that I liked coming to net and hitting drop shots, even early on. It didn't hurt that John McEnroe was on top, and had deft shots.

For many years afterwards, I took no more lessons. I wasn't sure who I'd take them from, and they would have been pricey had I looked.

A coworker of mine whose wife had just joined him after finishing her degree wanted to learn tennis with his wife, and they had signed up for lessons in DC at the site of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic where they have a semi-public court, where there's no membership, but you pay for the use of the courts.

I took lessons with Dale who looked a bit like Ron Paul. Dale taught a kind of tennis as exercise style for advanced players. He offered very little instruction. The idea was to go and do drills and essentially get in shape to play tennis. My tennis only improved incidentally, mostly through just playing.

Around Thanksgiving of last year, I took a lesson from Joel. He taught in this holistic manner. Throw the racquet at the ball he would opine. He would suggest that the racquet wanted to move in a certain way, and you had to be free and relaxed.

I didn't take another private lesson until January when I decided to take one at Cabin John with a guy named Mike. Mike was a youngish Asian dude in his early 20s. He was a bit more technical about what he wanted me to do, rotating my shoulders more, etc. He seemed a touch dispassionate, I seem to recall.

Then I didn't take lessons for a while, a few months. I heard about these high schoolers that would teach lessons at about half the cost of normal lessons at public courts. So I took three or so lessons from a guy named Sharat, who was finishing up his junior year in high school.

He was a pretty chatty dude, talking about how to hit the ball. He favored teaching you to play mini-tennis, suggesting that good technique comes from being able to hit the ball well when you are hitting in slow motion. If you have bad technique hitting slowly, you'd have bad technique hitting quickly. He was reasonably good, but still I felt something missing.

By this point, I was reading Fuzzy Yellow Balls and Essential Tennis. I knew Ian said, on his website, that he had private lessons. Although he was a bit of a hike from where I lived, it was still under an hour to get there. I wasn't sure what to expect, but so far, he's given the best lessons so far.

He's able to offer advice in the "modern style" dealing mostly with using the core more to his shots. He's able to observe strokes then offer a simple idea here or there to focus on one problem at a time. I've tried teaching tennis, and I find that I get nitpicky on all sorts of things. In the end, the person doesn't listen so much. Some of the advice I've heard before, but I didn't know to apply it to my own game.

A lot of tennis is surprisingly non-intuitive. For example, most people think of tennis as an arm sport. Apparently, if you play other sports like baseball or if you box, you find that you need to use more of your body if you want to get good power. The arm can get pretty strong on its own, but it can do even more if you coordinate it with your body.

There's plenty of players that don't turn their bodies when hitting shots. This turn helps add power to shots, but it takes a bit of coordination to do. I've been working on that more, since I used to not do it. I'm sure there are still issues with how I hit shots.

With volleys, I used to never cross-step to reach a volley nor turn sideways to hit. I'd frame the ball but never knew how I was doing it. I'd use too much hand motion trying to hit a ball and get no pace when I hit shots.

I understand these aren't intellectual endeavors but physical ones. And they're costly to learn these lessons, but they are rewarding too. Intellectual tasks require discovering the unknown often with little assistance except your own intellect. Learning tennis is trying to solve a problem to which some people have solutions to (at a price, to be fair).

Few things in life have answers as pat as tennis. Although it's taken some work to find someone to offer good lessons, it's been worth it so far!

Nicknames?

Nicknames were given to people to make their names easier to pronounce and to create a familiarity with them. Thus, David is Dave, Robert is Bob or Rob, and so forth. All of a sudden, people seem to prefer the lengthy names.

I know a guy named Anthony who prefers to go by Anthony, not Tony. A guy who prefers David over Dave. A guy who prefers Michael over Mike. Indeed, as Michael Phelps's mother was cheering him on, it wasn't with exhortations of Mike, but Michael.

Why the trend? I couldn't say, but it's something I've noticed.

Phelps

Michael Phelps is in his second Olympics. This is the time that people pay attention to sports like swimming and gymnastics and all sorts of other sports they would otherwise not pay attention too in the intervening four years.

People in this area pay some attention to Phelps because he's a Baltimore boy, and so his name has had some resonance, even before his success in the previous Olympics. Indeed, his name was more popular than his face. For a long time, I had no idea what he looked like.

Phelps is going for a Mark Spitz like record of some 8 gold medals. He's already won one gold medal in the 400 individual medley.

What's unknown to most people, me included, is the kind of person he is. Turns out, like many an American, he is the son of divorced parents when he was 9 years old. His mother is a principal at a middle school.

But it's difficult to determine what drives an individual. This is not Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, where fans follow his every accomplishment. They only pay attention at the Olympics, and Phelps gears himself to perform at his absolute best during the Olympics, as do many other swimmers.

While people discuss the lives of Brett Favre to death (and really, only his professional life), there's little known (to me) about one of the most accomplished American swimmer ever.

Admittedly, there are so many people out there, and we can hardly know them all, so why should Phelps be any different from anyone else. Why should we spend any more time figuring out who Phelps is? Perhaps like anything else, the answer is, why not?

Of course, the people who telecast the Olympics realize the games are for casual observers, and do as much to promote personalities as possible, realizing you have neither the time or inclination to do the research yourself, and then hope you have a long memory and remember them the next time the Olympics run.

Thus, this is Phelps's second Olympics at 23, and he was merely 19 the previous time in Athens. He could have an outside shot of competing at 27. I don't following swimming enough to know how long careers last (the odd exception is Dara Torres, who at 41, is swimming as fast as she ever has).

Cincy Semis: Djokovic vs Nadal

The Wimbledon men's final, arguably the best played men's final in history, lead many a commentator to say it was a transition from Federer who had long dominated men's tennis to Nadal, the heir apparent. Nadal has had an incredible two months, winning several of the clay court tournaments leading to the French, then powering his way to a French title without a drop of a set, then winning a grass court tournament for the first time ever (Queen's) and taking Wimbledon.

Everyone figured that hard courts would be Nadal's last hurdle. It's rare for a clay court player like Nadal to find his second best surface to be grass. Nearly every great clay court player, except Borg, played much better on hard courts than grass. The high bouncing ball typically favors a clay courter's style. Nadal, however, has managed to tame the low bounces at Wimbledon, partly because Wimbledon has altered the surface to make it play more like a slower surface.

In Toronto, at the Roger's Cup, Federer hoped to recover and play a good tournament, but found himself knocked out by Gilles Simon. Djokovic was also looking to come back, but played a game Andy Murray, who beat Djokovic. Murray had chances against Nadal, but Nadal won and then had an easy final.

In Cincy, Federer managed to win against Robby Ginepri, but it took three sets, then he lost to Ivo Karlovic, losing two tiebreaks to the 6'10" Croatian. Again, it looked like Nadal might roll on.

While everyone was claiming Federer was sliding a slippery slope, his long dominance coming to an end. Throughout, Djokovic was the forgotten man. He'd play Nadal tough on clay, but lose. He played him tough on grass, but lost there too. He had an early loss to Marat Safin at Wimbledon. Then, he lost to an aggressive Andy Murray, whose Wimbledon semifinals seemed to rejuvenate his attitude.

Still, Novak is way too good a player to stay down for too long, and as he made his way to meet Nadal, the key was how Djokovic would play against the soon-to-be number 1 player, Rafa Nadal. Hard courts is Djokovic's best surface and Rafa's worst surface, and only worst because other players can use their power on hard courts and give Rafa trouble.

Djokovic prefers the high bouncing balls on the hard courts. With his superior serve, he can win cheap points on hard courts, and then power his shots. Djokovic clearly hits harder than Rafa, and the hard courts rewards his power. Rafa is steadier, can create more angles.

So this match would be a bellwether letting fans know how far Djokovic had fallen. Commentators had said his serve had been off, but the last two matches, he was back to serving the way he was used to. This is the one area Nadal has a weakness. He has a good serve, but it's not a huge weapon.

Still, it was a surprise when Djokovic came out of the gates roaring. Novak took a page out of Federer's playbook, hitting down the line forehands for winners. Nadal is vulnerable to hard hit shots to his forehand, often rushing the shot and unable to get it back in play. Djokovic then began attacking Nadal, and even when Nadal could push Djokovic around, Novak would dig balls and put it in play, before striking with a hard shot. Novak punished Nadal's second serve like no other player.

Despite one close game where Nadal nearly went up 0-40 on Djokovic's serve, only to push an awkward volley a little deep instead, Djokovic rolled, He powered to two breaks of serve and it looked as if Nadal wasn't covering the court well nor dictating play.

Nadal finally held serve, but Djokovic held for the 6-1 win.

Despite the competitive nature of their matches, few of Nadal and Djokovic's matches have gone three sets. Usually, one wins in straight sets. The one recent exception was Hamburg where Djokovic lost in three sets to Nadal. In Queen's, it was a straight set win. The French was straight sets too. So it boded well for Novak that he won the first set.

The second set saw Nadal fighting tougher. The winners Novak hit in the first set were being replaced by errors. Nadal was fighting more and winning his serves more easily. However, at 5-all, Djokovic began playing more aggressively, and eventually broke. He followed it up with a good service game and won the match, 6-1, 7-5.

Nadal may appear to be the next great player, but when Djokovic is on, he can give Nadal as much trouble as anyone. Djokovic can hit flatter shots and harder serves and be aggressive on returns. He's also less likely than Federer to his wild shots.

Recall that Nadal was in danger of dropping his number 2 ranking to Djokovic several times, and nearly did so. Djokovic seems undeterred feeling it's only a matter of time before he can give Nadal trouble on surfaces that aren't clay (and he gave Nadal all he could handle at Hamburg).

The next round will be interesting because Djokovic recently lost to Murray. Murray has been playing a lot better lately. Unlike Henman, the prototypical serve and volleyer whose groundstrokes were good enough to compete against modern players, Murray is more of a groundstroker. He's got a great backhand, and is learning to play more aggressively instead of hanging way back. Like Djokovic, Murray has great touch hitting drop shots.

So the final should be a statement game for Djokovic showing whether he's back to the form that lead him to a win at the Australian Open.