Mesh Tennis

The Victoria, Australia police have been recruited by Tennis Australia. The police will be investigating and taking measures to prevent any shady conduct at the Australian open, such as illegal betting and players poisoning each other…all allegations that have been made against various players in the past few months.

The Australian Open in Melbourne starts on 14 January, with the police operation headed by detective superintendent Jack Blayney.

“We want to send a very clear message to anyone intending to take part in this type of activity that we will be watching them very closely and if they are caught they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” he said. BBC

In continuing with today’s weird news story trend, apparently Roger Federer was taught how to urinate off the back of a boat…

Curtis Blewett of Whistler, B.C., was the mid-bowman on the 2007 America’s Cup winning yacht Alinghi from Switzerland.

When that country’s favourite son, Roger Federer, went on a training run with the crew, Blewett spent time with him.

“Roger came sailing with us in Dubai [in December],” Blewett told The Globe and Mail last May.

“I had to show him how to pee off the back of the boat. He was asking me where the toilet was and I said, ‘you’re looking at it.’ ” Globe and Mail

Um, great…

I’ve posted about Blake’s girlfriend before (with photos), but not about the girls Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish are involved with…

Roddick (Brooklyn Decker) and Blake (Selita Ebanks) have girlfriends who were in the 2007 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and Fish’s girlfriend and fiancée, Stacey Gardner, is the case No. 2 model on the TV show Deal or No Deal. She also happens to be a lawyer. The Globe and Mail

Here’s Brooklyn Decker, courtesy of Google Images:

Here’s Stacy Gardner, also courtesy of Google Images:

Here are a few more details on the toilet seat scandal I posted about earlier. Did Sharapova agree to this willingly? I’d never allow for this - I’d instead offer up some signed photos or tennis gear for auction, or maybe just donate money directly to the charity. I don’t want to meet the kind of people that will buy some of this stuff.

Jerry Goh, organizer of Sharapova’s Dec. 30 exhibition match against Russian Anna Chakvetadze, said every item used by the former Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion — except the hotel room toilet seat — will be sold to benefit charity, the Russian information agency Novosti reported Monday.

“Since there’s an interest for products that Sharapova will use during her stay here, we want to do this tastefully,” Goh said. “So no toilet seats or covers will be offered for auction.”

Items to be sold after the visit include a swimming suit, towels, slippers, pillow cases and bed linens. Goh did not specify whether the items would be washed before the sale. UPI

Maria Sharapova hasn’t even done her exhibition match is Singapore yet, and already plans are being made on what will be auctioned off. Here is one item that didn’t make the cut:

Officials have drawn the line at auctioning the hotel toilet seat to be used by Maria Sharapova when the Russian trendsetter plays an exhibition next weekend in Singapore.

“Since there’s an interest for products that Sharapova will use during her stay here, we want to do this tastefully,” organiser Jerry Goh told Singapore’s New Paper on Sunday.

“So no toilet seats or covers will be offered for auction.” Bangkok Post

Creepy. Why are the organizers even involved in this? It sounds like they seriously considered auctioning a toilet seat!

I promise this is my last Jaslyn Hewitt post. For today.

This video is an older one of her, before she bulked up as much as some of her photos show.

So, I just had to hit up Google images after reading about Jaslyn Hewitt this morning. Admittedly, I don’t understand the female bodybuilder thing - creepy muscular girls with odd fake tans and mismatched face makeup just don’t seem very fun to me, but I have had no desire whatsoever to seriously partake in weight training.

Unfortunately, one of the first images I turned up is even worse than the original I posted.

I’m assuming her old boyfriend Joachim Johannson has run for the hills at this point - she is so muscular that she is practically an occupational hazard to him or any other athlete!

And her pictures seem to contradict her earlier quotes about bodybuilding:

Hewitt, 24, trained for up to four hours a day to prepare for the event and shed 12 per cent of her body fat.

She was only interested in figure events and did not want to “bulk up like a she-man”.

“I like the athletic feminine look,” she said.

“I’ve always wanted to have a six pack and get as lean as I possibly could.

“I’ve never been in the shape that I am at the moment and I’m happy with the figure I have, even though I know it’s almost impossible to maintain.” Herald Sun

The ATP is cleaning out its closet of betters by reaching back several years and finding anyone in violation of their rules. Maybe they should be more concerned about those breaking their rules now?

The ATP suspended Italians Potito Starace and Daniele Bracciali on Saturday for making bets—some as little as $7—on tennis matches involving other players.

The Italian tennis federation denounced the penalties by the governing body as an “injustice,” and the players said they have been made scapegoats.

Starace, ranked 31st, was suspended for six weeks and fined $30,000, the Italian federation said. Bracciali, ranked 258th, was banned for three months and fined $20,000. Both suspensions take effect Jan. 1.

The federation said Starace made five bets for a total of $130 two years ago, and Bracciali made about 50 bets of $7 each from 2004-05.

“Injustice is done,” the statement said. “These penalties are absolutely, excessively severe compared to the magnitude of the violations carried out by the two players.”

The federation said the two were not aware of the ATP’s betting regulations, and they stopped placing bets as soon as they learned it was against the rules.

“It’s disgusting,” Starace said. “The ATP doesn’t know where to turn. It’s all a joke.”

Bracciali said the two had been “sacrificed.”

“That’s why they came after us,” he said. “We are not champions and we don’t count in the upper echelons.” San Jose Mercury News

Now no one has anything positive to say about the new court surface set to make its Grand Slam debut at the 2008 Australian Open…

Concerns over the controversial decision to tear up the former courts and replace them with an unproven new surface is escalating, following injuries to Mark Philippoussis and Jelena Dokic, a scathing attack from the supplier of the old courts and fears the global tournament will be played on surfaces even slower than those deemed unworthy of Melbourne Park.

The winner of the Australian Open wildcard play-offs, Victorian Joseph Sirianni, told The Sun-Herald yesterday the courts were “like sandpaper” during his four-set victory over Adam Feeney in the final at the Rod Laver Arena.

Sirianni liked the new electric blue courts but he’s a baseliner who thinks the slower, the better.

The whole idea of ripping up the 20-year-old Rebound Ace courts and replacing them at a high six-figure cost was to give Lleyton Hewitt and most of the other players what they wanted - a sleek surface nearly as fast as that used at the US Open.

So far, no dice.

“They’re slow at the moment,” Sirianni said. “It will speed up once players come in from overseas and practise on them. There are still a few weeks before the Open and they’ll get worn in.

“That’s the expectation as more and more people get to play on them. The balls are fluffing up a lot at the moment. I mean the court surface, because it’s a new court, it’s a bit rough. It’s like sandpaper.”

Which is not the picture being painted by Tennis Australia, whose boss Craig Tiley has been claiming Plexicushion - installed in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars - is markedly superior to Rebound Ace in consistency, speed and heat retention.

But after biting his tongue for a few months while Tiley talked up Plexicushion, the managing director of Rebound Ace Sports, Chris Canty, finally fired back, saying those claims are false.

“For the first time in 20 years the 2008 Australian Open will not be played on an Australian court surface,” Canty said. “In May Tennis Australia announced that it would replace Rebound Ace as the court surface supplier with American-manufactured Plexicushion Prestige.

“All criticisms about the Rebound Ace surface at Melbourne Park have been based on courts that are up to 20 years old.
Sydney Morning Herald

If they want courts as fast as those at the US Open, why don’t they put in the same damn court surface as that of the US Open?

THE player who introduced the famous “vicht” salute to world tennis is outraged Lleyton Hewitt has adopted the trademark and stands to make millions.

The former Wimbledon champion is understood to have bought the rights to the distinctive celebratory gesture after former Swedish pro Niclas Kroon inadvertently let it lapse.
Kroon, 41, who held the rights along with former world No. 1 Mats Wilander from 1988, often used the signal whenever they won a point or game.

Broadly meaning “for sure”, it is now widely used by athletes from other sports, including swimmer Grant Hackett and Crows defender Andrew McLeod.

“I wish he had called me first,” Kroon said from his home in Houston, Texas.

“I don’t know what to say. You get to a certain age and you realise people are f***ing other people all the time.

“It’s all about business and making money. I’m so sick and tired of sh** like that.

“I know that he’s surrounded by people who are probably going to make money from this.

“The thing about using the word “mate” in Australia . . . it probably doesn’t sound so good anymore.”

Kroon conceded the trademark may have lapsed several months ago after the death of his father, Erik, who handled his business affairs.

“My Dad just passed away and I haven’t got the papers here but I’m going to check all this out in the next few days,” Kroon said.

It’s not the first time people have tried to use the “vicht” signal, which he and brother Michael first started using when they played yahtzee as children in the 1970s.

“We were fighting with some people in Sweden a long time ago,” he said. “But Mats and I had the patent.

“We were paying (the fees for the trademark) even though we weren’t using it.

“I’ve been doing stuff with it for years, even here in the States, for a small market.

“It’s funny that it (Hewitt’s move) happened now because I was just about to launch it here in the US and put it online.”

Kroon said had planned to launch his own boutique brand of “vicht” clothing at the launch of a tennis and fitness club in Houston.

Eventually, he intended to market the brand more widely because of its popularity – similar to golfer Greg Norman’s famous shark logo.

Kroon, a popular tennis journeyman who won an ATP title in Brisbane and reached a career-high ranking of 46, said he recalled Hewitt using the gesture at the 2004 Masters Cup in Houston.

“In conversation, he said it was Mats Wilander who started it, but a friend I was with told him that I was the one who started it,” Kroon said.

“Every time he was walking off the court during his game I’d do the vicht sign and he’d be responding. We were doing it for fun, there was no big deal.”

Kroon said he would consult lawyers over his right to use the salute in the future. Adelaide Now