Notes of a Draw Sheet

A roof over Ashe Stadium?
Strategy could undermind Serena's dominance
Second week looking great for men

By Matthew Cronin
tennisreporters.net

FROM THE U.S. OPEN – In the past decade, there has never been a U.S. Open much less spring-summer Grand Slam season when so much rain fell. The amount of foul weather should convince the organizers of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open to install a retractable roof on their center courts (Roland Garros doesn't have to because you can still play on clay in a drizzle), because the longer play is halted, the more the tournaments run the risk of losing fan interest.

In the NYC area, you rarely hear sports talk callers dialing in to discuss the Open in the first place. Some of that has to do with the hosts' lack of interest in the sport and their decision not to make it a topic of conversation, and some of that has to do with tennis' longstanding, historical niche as a "clubby" sport (and by this I don't mean a country club sport), where its large and diverse community of leaders and followers like to keep the richness of the game to themselves. Does anyone in tennis really want the ATP Tour's battle with Lleyton Hewitt dissected by the masses to the extent that the potential baseball strike was? I think not.

Who knows, the next thing that could occur is that Joey from Queens and a bunch of his rowdy buddies might try to secure box seats for Roddick-Corretja night match, get a little plastered, see Roddick's coach, Tarik Benhabiles, in the friends box and start a "Tarik Sucks" chant.

Strategy could undermind Serena's dominance

Susan Mullane Camerawork USA, Inc.

I'll never be in the camp of those who say that Venus and Serena Williams dominating their sport is bad for the game. Their tennis is at such a high level now that it will force the other players to work harder and smarter to improve. Without question, there are a number of other players who have been sitting on their self-created laurels, including the talented Daja Bedanova, who was embarrassed by Serena on Sunday. The same goes for Elena Demetieva, Jelena Dokic, Patty Schynder and Meghann Shaughnessy. Many of these women put in hours on the practice court and sometimes in the gym, but they can be strategically vacant and haven't sat down long enough and considered what kind of style it will take for them to get to the top. Not only do you have to be in peak condition to take down a Williams, you have to be technically sound enough to hang in points and intelligent enough to see which particular stroke isn't working for them on the day.

It's amazing how many competitors play into the Williams' strengths. Serena is the best return of server we've seen on the WTA Tour since Monica Seles in her heyday. You cannot allow her to plant and take a short, vicious swipe at a return. You cannot allow her to dictate the match by taking your serve and firing outright down-the-line winners. Easier said than done? Perhaps, but it's not beyond the tour's top-20 players to slice Serena out wide in the deuce court or slice her back to the middle in the ad court. Those players need to go for both their first and second serves and damn the serving percentages. A second serve in the 65- to 80-mph range is not going to get it done against the zoning Serena. It will be interesting to see if either Daniela Hantuchova is up to the task.

Speaking of Daniela, she took at awful spill against Justine Sunday up in the second set. She appeared to injure her right wrist of hand pretty severely, which didn't prevent her from winning in a third-set tiebreak when the match resumed Monday night. Daniela is one of the few players with enough game to challenge Serena.

Second week looking great for men

Fred Mullane Camerawork USA, Inc.

Over on the men's side, the draw is shaping up for a hellaciuosly exciting Super Saturday. The early favorites to make the Final Four are Lleyton Hewitt, who should face Andre Agassi; and Andy Roddick who should come up against Gustavo Kuerten. Even though Pete Sampras beat Greg Rusedski, it's hard to see him knocking off Tommy Haas and Roddick in succession. However, I would give him the edge over Haas and should Andy fall to either Alex Corretja, Tim Henman or Juan-Ignacio Chela, I'd give Pete the nod over any of those three.

How about this quarterfinal: Guga versus Juan Carlos Ferrero, who he caged like a nipping puppy in the '00 and '01 Roland Garros semis. First, JC has to get by the explosive Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and then probably the on-again, off-again Arnaud Clement of France. But he should and then we will see if he has enough heart to compete with the legendary artery scawler, Guga.

On the top half of the draw, positives have abounded for the likes of Younes El Aynaoui, Wayne Ferreira, May Mirnyi, Jan-Michael Gambill and Roger Federer. Albert Costa's five-set loss to Ferreira was very disappointing for the Roland Garros champ, who by all rights should have faced Lleyton in the quarters. As journalist Steve Flink noted yesterday, Costa has one-Slam wonder written al over him. Even though Wayne is the worst Grand Slam player of any of the elite players over the past decade, let's give him credit for being highly competitive at the Slams this year. Should he get past the streaky El Aynaoui, he'll give Hewitt all he can handle.

At this point in time, it's fair to say that Jarkko Nieminen, Gaston Gaudio and Tommy Robredo all are questionable to join the top 10. None made the New Balls campaign when it was introduced a couple years ago, but had the ATP continued with that marketing strategy, at least Nieminen and Gaudio deserved to be on the new list.

By the way, of all the original New Balls guys (and I never bought into Guga being placed in the ads because he was already a proven commodity), only Hewitt and Ferrero have proven themselves to be Grand Slam forces. Roddick, Gambill and Haas could change my mind this week with a run to the final.