People to watch at The Open

Rog Vs. Rafa - The Street Slam

I know, I know, I don't offer news on this blog. I have stuck quite religiously to my goal of rendering random ramblings that don't benefit humankind in any possible way. But this is just too big!

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are going to battle it out on the streets of the greatest city in the world! The exhibition match is scheduled for 11 am on August 24th in front of Golfsmith Golf & Tennis at 54th and Lexington in New York City.



That said, I have two quibbles (do I ever!): one, I don't like this marriage of s(p)orts -- golf is a good walk spoilt and tennis is a sport that requires mental, physical and emotional acumen; you don't just team them up cos they don't have teams! Two, Roger Federer owns tennis, not just grass. Please note that he has split his grass and hard court majors right down the middle. Rafael Nadal can own all the clay he wants.

I am wondering if this street duel is worth a trip. I missed out on USO Finals tickets and it would be quite unusual for me to not be at Flushing for the Open. The crowds are a definite turn-off (like NYC is not crowded enough already), but the thought of possibly catching sight of Federer from just a few hundred yards away (even if those yards are filled with a zillion mortal beings I don't care for) is tempting. Also, watching Nadal's less than stellar performance on hard courts, it doesn't look like the two are going to repeat a championship meeting at Arthur Ashe Stadium. So, might as well catch them in Midtown Manhattan...

The other half we’ve been missing

Ever since Roger Federer stepped on a tennis court, the other half has suffered from low self-esteem -- the other half of the draw, the other half of the tour, but most importantly, the other half of the court, the one Federer doesn’t grace with his ever-so-smooth craftsmanship and unflappable on-court demeanor.

Sure, a lot of players have threatened Federer, quite a few of them have come close to beating him and some have even got the better of him, but unfortunately for them, Roger is not just unbeatable on the scoreboard, but also in how he gets there. No player (inclusive of bygone wonders like Sampras) could possibly match his beautiful playing style – that feeling of effortlessness Federer renders to shots we never dreamed possible.

But yesterday, 20-year-old Richard Gasquet proved that the French are not just a beautiful people, but play a beautiful sport as well (he had some help from Mauresmo before him).

Taking a set off Roger Federer in a Masters series championship is tough enough, but matching him shot for shot, combating him point for point, in an uncannily complementary style, with an eerily similar quality and an equally placid demeanor is a whole different ballgame.

And that’s what it was yesterday – a ballgame different from any we have seen in the past couple years of Federer domination. The Swissman did win the Roger’s Cup, quite fittingly, but the 20-year old who’s often called “baby Fed” for good reason came closer than anyone ever has to reflecting Federer’s artistry on the usually unfortunate half of the court.

If Fed’s shot-making choices often seem as effortless as picking a flavor of candy (let me try the drop shot today; now, how about the swing volley?), the 20-year-old decided that two could play this game. It was all there – backhand drop volleys, passing shots around the net-post, perfectly timed overhead lobs, you name it. Just like Roger seems to read the ball seconds before it even touches the opponent’s racket, the Frenchman showed his finesse at anticipating shots upstairs before they played out on court. And if the Swiss phenomenon rarely has a hair out of place while performing his on-court magic, the youngster maintained an admirable icy calm demeanor – obviously a lesson well learnt from his racket-throwing racket a couple years ago. But we all do remember that even Federer was more than a tad temperamental as a teenage sensation, don’t we? If he’s following in Rog’s footsteps, he’s sure as hell not taking any detours. His on-court style might be all-out aggression, off-court, he’s not taking any chances. And who could be a safer bet than the man everyone’s calling possibly the greatest ever?

Yesterday, the world number one surpassed the young gun by concocting winners most people would deem impossible. But then Federer has had a five-year head start. Gasquet seems to have brought all the right goods to the other side of the court and that’s as good a start as any...

Peering out of my tennis bubble...

I decided to peer out of the tennis bubble I seem to be living in these days just long enough to scribble my thoughts on a few goings-on in the world. For god knows the world needs a sound critic like me.



Oh for the love of God, snippet edition

Someone in the Hardball audience asked sometime back – Do you think the middle-east crisis can ever be solved? Such naiveté! People seem to think that if Israel and Lebanon sit down to a perfectly good breakfast and talk, the chaos will magically disappear. Now, there’s a few problems with that theory – one, there is no way to have perfectly good breakfast without pork, two, religion knows no reason or logic and three, religion is practically deaf – by that I mean, the only sounds religious people hear are the voices in their head; earthly tones don’t match that wavelength (pun unintended, contempt very intended).

Tom Friedman hit the nail on the head (as he so often does) on Meet the Press a couple weeks ago -- ‘Why don’t Indian Muslims [you know] get their buzz this way? Could it be because the richest man in India is a Muslim software entrepreneur? Could it be because the president of India is a Muslim? Could it be because there’s an Indian Muslim woman on the Indian Supreme Court? Could it be because the leading female movie star in India is a Muslim woman? You know, when people get their dignity from building things rather than confronting other people, it’s amazing what politics flows from that’. (Oh, I love Tom Friedman. I fault my home country for a lot of things; being religiously fanatical isn’t one of them).

Following Friedman’s line of thought, if people got their ‘sense of fulfillment’ from a constructive day job, would they spend so much time fighting over who’s god is better? An idle mind is a god’s workshop.

Just how stupid is Ann Coulter?

When the conservative diva of the country was throwing abuses at 9-11 widows a month ago, I was too busy watching a ball not in Coulter’s court, but a few weeks ago I happened to catch her venom on Hardball [another reason to hate large gaps in the tennis season – you’re not quite tuned to take on the big, bad world]. Her most recent label for liberals is ‘godless’, which, surprise, surprise, is also the name of her latest book. She makes the case that liberals want to suck brains out of embryos, which in her opinion, qualify as human beings. While I have no doubt that Coulter knows something about sucking brains, I don’t think she quite has the authority to decide what constitutes a human being. What makes this even more ridiculous is that while she doesn’t want to hurt a tiny cell that is barely an entity, she is all for whole human beings wasting away from debilitating disease. Just how godful is she?

Kudos to a sharp questioner in the audience whom Coulter squashed with a conceited “smarty pants”. Calling names seems to be her only area of expertise. No wonder she’s made a living out of the L-word.

Some things never change

The new LG commercial (and fridge) showcases a slick looking LCD screen on the door. The smart people at ‘Life’s good’ technology decided to make it better by combining man’s two greatest obsessions – they put a TV on a fridge. Now, it was alright when writers replaced overflowing pages of illegible hand with the sleek and shiny laptop, when office-goers traded the ageing leather of an overstuffed organizer for the fancy blackberry or even when graphite encroached upon wood in tennis. Let me tell you why this is a bad idea -- imagine a celluloid screen in your favorite kitchen corner that projects family pictures with power-point acumen, flashes thunderstorm warnings at whim and taunts you with to-do and shopping lists. The reason I have a fridge is cos I can store food in it and the reason I have stuff flailing all over it is cos I can; I don’t need it to tell me what emotion I am feeling today and you think someone actually reads the dog-eared clip from a bygone era? Besides, I have a perfectly good celluloid screen in the living room that I sit glued to about 4 hours a day, thank you very much.

The ad ends with a kid’s coloring page that continues to dominate the door. Some things never change. Kudos, LG you got that right. Now you might as well pry out your smug little screen and put in a more fridge-friendly piece of equipment – a cork board perhaps? I sure could do without antimagnetic magnets...

Is your world faceless?

As happens every once a while, the New York Times corroborates my views about a year after I air them (they should just give me a job and save themselves further embarrassment).

A couple years ago at a Matrix theme party (aka dressed in black) my friends were appalled at my inability to distinguish between two supposedly distinct characters that appear in the series. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem ridiculous, but couple it with the fact that I call myself a die-hard Matrix enthusiast, have watched the original movie (like any bonafide Matrix-phile, I abhor the sequels vehemently) a few dozen times and could quite rightly name the many Renaissance philosophers that set the stage for the Nebuchadnezzar. So, in the battle of names vs. faces, for me, the name inevitably wins. Apparently, I am not alone -- there is a whole group of people in the world that can be characterized as “facially blind” (not surprisingly, the same people that cannot identify a face also tend to get lost on the street – it’s all about contours, people!)

Stopping just short of excruciating biological detail, this function comes from a region of the brain called the fusiform gyrus which sparks in normal human beings but remains surprisingly inactive in the visage-blind. Simply put, the latter make up for this deficit by kicking another portion of the brain into overdrive – one that records characteristics consciously -- ‘mild goatee, large nose, striped shirt blah blah’ – as opposed to those that intuitively remember.

So, if I spend my TV watching hours sticking to sitcoms with an upper limit of six recurring characters or talk-shows where names come stapled to the bottom of every face, there’s a freaking good reason for that. Law and Order with its multitude of faces, places and scenarios throws my fusiform gyrus completely out of whack.... I also have to note that I’m not just literally face-blind. Appearances rarely, if ever, matter to me (and that’s saying a lot, cos just about everything matters to me!) Maybe I don’t see because I don’t care or I don’t care because I don’t see?
I speak for my kind, of course.