Back Porch International Tennis

Anna Kournikova isn't great at tennis. She was very good at being very attractive and thus very good at garnering attention from the media and endorsers, but never very good at tennis. Unfortunately for Jimmy Fallon, she's pretty decent at beer pong, as he found out last night. Or at least better than Fallon anyway. If it were anyone else, I would bite on "sandbagging," but not with Fallon. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be on my 400-count sheets (pantsless, natch) waiting for Conan to come back.

In a world dominated by always on broadband Internet connections, it's hard for any athlete to sneak up on sports fans anymore. But over the past few weeks, with the sports world focusing relentlessly on the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, a 19-year old Argentine may very well have put himself in the best position to win the Men's Singles Title at this year's U.S. Open.

The young man I'm talking about is 19th-ranked Juan-Martin Del Potro, and the reason to get excited about his prospects is that he hasn't lost a tennis match since he exited the second round of Wimbledon back on June 25. Toss in the fact that he's got the sort of looks that could win him a second career as a male model, and you can see why plenty of folks think he's ready to break out in a big way.

After an early exit from Wimbledon, Del Potro won a pair of clay court tournaments in Europe -- his first wins on the ATP Tour -- before decamping to the USA for the Countrywide Classic in Los Angeles where he beat Andy Roddick in the final in two sets. Here all week in Washington at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, it's been nothing but more of the same, as Del Potro ripped through his side of the bracket as the tournament's second seed, running his consecutive win streak to 18 matches. Meanwhile on the other side of the ladder, #1 seed Roddick was upended in the quarterfinals on Friday night by the unheralded Serbian Viktor Troicki, Del Potro's opposition in today's final.

Over the past few weeks, I've been spending more than a few evenings in downtown Washington to take in a couple of matches of Washington's entry into World Team Tennis, the Washington Kastles. As I wrote a few weeks back, it's a fun experience, and now that the regular season has come to an end, I have to say I'm going to miss it.

That's why I made sure to budget some time last night to take in the last match of the regular season against the St. Louis Aces. Taking time to see the Aces meant having a chance to watch Anna Kournikova, something I didn't want to miss. Better yet, this would be the one opportunity to see Kournikova on the same court as Justin Gimelstob, the member of the Kastles who ran off the rails a couple of weeks back while attacking Kournikova while trying to drum up some publicity for the league.

So what happened? While everyone was watching, not much. But once the match was delayed by a violent Washington thunderstorm and the festivities were moved elsewhere after most of the crowd opted to go home, then the real fireworks began.

Earlier in the day at a lightly attended press conference, Kournikova twice refused to answer any questions about Gimelstob. Later, the media people who work for the Kastles assured us that Gimelstob and Kournikova wouldn't be facing off in the mixed doubles portion of the evening.

As many of my fellow FanHousers understand all too intimately, sports blogging can often morph into part-time, but year-round obsession. As somebody who has covered the NHL as a blogger for seven seasons, I've come to appreciate just how difficult the life of a typical NHL beat writer can be.

Just when you think the season is over and you might get a little bit of a break, you discover that you're dead wrong. In the NHL, that means understanding that just as you get finished covering the Stanley Cup Finals, the NHL Awards Show is only a couple of days away. After that, the NHL Entry Draft arrives like a freight train, followed pretty quickly by the start of the free agent signing period, now better known as "Xmas in July".

Don't get me wrong, there's no sport in the world that I love more than hockey, and it's been that way since I first stepped on the ice with a stick in my hand as a six-year old kid. It's just that sometimes I'd like to leaven my sports diet with something different from time to time.

That's why I was more than happy to put the NHL aside for one evening, and take a seat inside Kastles Stadium, one of the simplest, yet most attractive venues I've ever visited, for an evening with Serena Williams, the Washington Kastles, Boston Lobsters and World Team Tennis.

Rafael Nadal has a habit we should talk about: namely, that like your girfriend, he picks his shorts out of his ass every two minutes or so on court. It's a mild, obsessive compulsive thing he's got, one most competitors in tennis grin and bear during matches with Nadal.

Unless you're bizarro Swede Robin Soderling, though, who "took the mickey" with Nadal during their 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 4-6, 7-5 epic match that stretched over five days due to rain delays. Watch for the mock ass-pick and subsequent diva delays between the two.

The catfight between the two continued after the match, when Soderling looked away at the handshake and then complained that he waited for Nadal "more than 200 times." Nadal reponded by saying that no one had anything good to say about Soderling in the locker room, and that his ass was more famous than Soderling's any day. And with all the attention he draws to it with the constant undie maintenance...well, it should be.

It's time for breakfast at Wimbledon...meaning it's time to listen to Bud Collins froth all over 22 year old men for hours at a time, have NBC tell you delicious strawberries and cream are for breakfast, and occasionally fit in half-cocked historical comparisons between tennis players.

(Bud Collins, by the way, falls in the Jim McKay/Mel Kiper genre of "broadcasters dethawed for single events. He spends the rest of his year safely ensconced in a freezer in Landover, Maryland, sandwiched between Dick Button and a nice rack of lamb.)

The comparison we have in mind is between Bjorn Borg and Roger Federer, one the British press seems bound and determined to make stick in the minds of the public. Federer's already got 12 Grand Slam titles at the age of 25, one ahead of Borg's total of 11 at the age of 26. Federer's behind in two departments, though.

First: cheese-alicious endorsements:

And second, amazing adventures with wet t-shirt contest winners: (link goes to Nerve.com, which you may not want your employer to see. Proceed with caution.)

His first marriage, to the tennis player Mariana Simionescu, failed when he met a seventeen year old while judging a wet-T-shirt competition and fathered her child.

Well, when they ask you if you're ready for the responsibilities of being a wet t-shirt contest judge, you better mean it when you say yes. Bjorn certainly did.

The future of sports is here, and thanks to Foul Balls, we have seen it: Speedminton, a variant of Badminton using a modified shuttlecock that instead of fluttering around the court speeds bullet-like from racquet to racquet. It should allow you to retain your dignity, unlike that embarrassing Nordic Walking fad we tried to start in the neighborhood a few years back. (Bike shorts, trekking poles, and skin-tight workout shirt in urban area=not good reception from local "characters." Note: characters=prosititutes and their management.)

If the promotional video is to be believed...



...the sport may be played on a number of surfaces, including but not limited to:

• Beaches
• Across rooftops ten stories up in urban areas (no diving!)
  
• On pieces of granite floating in a lake of fire
  
• On a glacier, presumably while you're waiting for rescue or the sweet release of frosty death to greet you.
• In the dark, but only while wearing a bikini and day-glo paint in tribal patterns.

You may order the specially constructed, space-age Speeder shuttlecocks from Speedminton's website, which boasts of the Speeders attaining "Speeds of up to 175 mph," ideal for those who've ever wanted to fire a shuttlecock directly through an opponents chest. But who cares what we think--Speedminton has an endorsement from the elegant and beautiful Maria Sharapova, which you do not and for which you are very, very sad.

NOOOOOOO!!!! Do not want! Serena Williams met her fate today in the French Open, taking the most charismatic presence in all of international sport with her after a 6-3, 6-4 loss to Justin Henin-Ardennes-D'Arcachon-Renault-Deneuve whatever her name is now we don't care. All we know is that Serena's out, Venus is gone, and all that's left for American viewers in the French are the inevitable crushing defeat of whoever's facing Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova grunting loudly. Admittedly, both of these will be quite impressive in their own right.

Serena summed up her loss in tantalizing language:

"All she had to do was show up," Williams said. "I just pretty much stood back and let her take advantage of me."

(Spits coffee, pauses, comes to senses.) Well, at least she had fun while she was there. (Warning: we're told there's language in the song. We can't hear it, but then again, we're from Atlanta. Hip-hop profanity doesn't even register on our radar.)

Does she look at least a little, dare we say ... adorably dorky there? And why does that make her even more attractive now? Toss in a World of Warcraft habit, and we're talking an anthrax-bad crush here.

Venus Williams warms up in style at the French Open this week, breaking her own serve speed record by crushing a 206 KPH serve against poor, hapless Ashley Harkleroad. If you're very observant, you'll notice that the earth spins backwards a bit due to the speed of the ball, much like Superman rotating the earth backwards to go back in time.

Both Venus and Serena Williams advanced to the third round, ensuring that we will be watching tennis for at least another day or two, because like most men we watch women's tennis for the right reasons: grunting, athletic women wearing short skirts doing a lot of deep knee bends on low camera angles.