Mesh Tennis

It appears that “Age of Love” is finally over, so here’s the results. Mark picked the, uh, kitten.

Here’s the “loser”, Jennifer:

And here’s the “winner”, Amanda, with Mark:

They reunited in Vegas to watch the final episode - the first time they’ve seen each other since the filming of the finale. How exciting. Now will Mark get back to tennis???

A month or two ago, Mauresmo’s coach started blabbering to any media that would listen that she would probably not play the US Open. Well, turns out that he knew what his client was going to do way back then…she is now officially out due to injury. The cited injuries are groin problems and also issues with the appendectomy surgery she underwent in March.

This is definitely a loss for the tournament - any guesses on who else will be out, men or women?

“I can function sitting on my butt and talking, I am fine,” she said. “But running around on the tennis court, no.”

Sharapova said the injury occurred Saturday afternoon on the practice court.

“I could not lift my foot up on the serve and I could not run to more than two or three balls,” she said. “It is just so weird how it came on.”

She tried various treatments deep tissue massage, an ice bath, acupuncture and taking anti-inflammatories in an attempt to play.

“The doctor has seen these things before and was not optimistic,” Sharapova said. “You still try and do everything you can. Based on my experience, you never know, but I hope it is only a couple of days.”

Sharapova had already withdrawn from next week’s tournament in Toronto.
ABC News

The women continue to garner a lot of criticism from commentators and other players for pulling out of tournaments so late, Sharapova included. I’m sure she doesn’t want to do anything to aggravate any injuries leading up to the US Open. Since she has only claimed one title this year, defending that Grand Slam must be important.

Radek Stepanek has been strongly criticized for not supporting his country in the Davis Cup, but it looks like he is on the verge of returning to the competition. Maybe the Martina Hingis break-up helped change his mind?

Radek Stepanek has ended his self-imposed Davis Cup exile and will return to the Czech team for next month’s World Group playoff against Switzerland, the CTK news agency reported on Tuesday.

“I am glad he returned to the team, the past is forgotten. We have spoken with each other and all has been agreed,” Czech captain Jaroslav Navratil was quoted as saying by CTK.

Stepanek quit the Davis Cup team three years ago after clashing with then captain Cyril Suk.
Guardian

I seriously doubt that all is forgotten - some really nasty things were said.

Man, spend one weekend in a photogrpahy workshop and so much happens.

Stepanek had an Association of Tennis Professionals spokesman inform the media at the Rogers Cup on Saturday that he has broken off with the Swiss tennis star. He gave no reasons for the split.

The announcement came after Stepanek talked to the media about his semifinal loss to top-seeded Roger Federer.

MSNBC.com

Apparently, they are still good friends though.

Ah, Brett ratner. I remember that guy. I saw him in the stands in Miami back when I first started getting crazy about tennis. Apparently he is still talking about Serena Williams, all these years later:

* Serena Williams — Palm Beach Gardens tennis pro and former girlfriend of Ratner’s: “We’d go away somewhere where there were tennis courts and I’d go, “C’mon, let’s hit,’ or I’d carry around my tennis racquet and she’d go, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I’d say, ‘Don’t you like playing with me?’ and she’d go, ‘Brett, I want to be honest with you, OK? There’s nothing I hate more in life than playing tennis with you.’
“So if you ask me if I’m a good tennis player, I guess not. I guess it’s frustrating (for her) playing with somebody that’s not a pro, y’know. She was just miserable.”
Palm Beach Post

I bet she probably just didn’t want tennis taking over yet another part of her life. The last thing I want to do with friends, boyfriends, etc is my job.

Nikolay Davydenko “has nothing whatsoever to do” with the suspicious betting patterns on his second-round match at the Prokom Open, the player’s agent said.

ATP Tour officials are investigating the fourth-ranked Davydenko’s loss Thursday to the 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina in which the Russian retired because of injury in the deciding set.

In an unprecedented move Friday, British online gambling company Betfair voided all bets placed on the match, saying the market wasn’t fair.
MSNBC.com

This look pretty bad for Nikolay, even though he is promising full cooperation. It just doesn’t add up that so many unusual things would happen in a single match - high bets, the timing of the bets, and then the match results. It certainly seems as though at least someone from his camp had some kind of involvement in this situation.

Davydenko has promised to provide his medical recxords, but I don’t believe that will do much to exonerate him. I am sure almost all players on the tour are always injured, just in varying degrees of seriousness.

The best thing to do would be to track down who placed the bets, which is information that should be readily available to the investigating parties - said to be a third party, not the ATP or betting agency. I suspect someone is going to talk and we’ll find out what is really going on.