See You in the Hall of Fame

I have always loved Monica Seles, so it was particularly sad to read on Valentine's Day that she decided to hang up her rackets. Monica was the original power player in the early 90s, using two hands to come over the ball on both the backhand and forehand sides. Along with those fierce strokes were the even fiercer grunts that exploded each time the ball got whacked. After HIV turned my life inside out and upside down, I began to comprehend how Monica must have felt after she was stabbed on a tennis court by a deranged man in Germany in April 1993. In one instant, she went from being the top player in the world to a physically and emotionally devastated human being. For 27 months, she stayed out of the game. And though she had family, friends and fans supporting her, it was surely a time of withdrawal into an impenetrable vault. Monica eventually found the courage to come back to tennis, and incredibly won the Australian Open in 1996. But that was to be the last of her 9 Grand Slams. She was never quite able to recover her early top form, and the sporting world was cheated out of witnessing what could have been the greatest female tennis player in history. Without question Monica will find her way into the Hall of Fame. But for many years, I think she's already been in a place where no one could touch her.

Moves Like a Butterfly

There is nothing like a good tennis tournament to put a guy MIA. This year's Australian Open --the self-dubbed "Happy Open"--did not disappoint one bit. Staying up to watch the matches live at 3:30 am doesn't get any easier as you get older, but they were worth it. And besides, I have always felt a strange kind of power in the wee hours of the morning when I think the rest of the world is asleep. For me, the player of the tourney was Russia's Maria Sharapova who won this year's crown for her third Grand Slam title over Ana Ivanovic of Serbia. For those of you who are not tennis fans, it was a very different story last year when Maria got her butt soundly whipped by Serena Williams in the finals, 6-1, 6-2. Some players would have had a hard time recovering from a drubbing like that, but Maria decided to use the loss as a springboard. To fly higher. She claimed to have trained very hard in the off season and it showed. Her movement, usually restricted to the baseline, saw her stepping out of her comfort zone as she came to net far more often to put away points. That meant coming up with shots you don't associate with her, like a slice backhand on the approach to net. This year it wasn't just all about power, it was about a plan. If in 2007 she was a caterpillar inching from side to side in the back court, this year she was a butterfly. A lot of people can't get past the blond hair and green eyes, which is a shame because you see something far more attractive when you do--passion for the game. And that's what puts her far ahead of the game. Well done, Maria. Good luck at the French!

Just 13 More Days...

Little kids began the countdown to Christmas at least two weeks ago. I've been in a similar mode, waiting for the arrival of January. That's when my two favorite sports start up again--golf and tennis. The boys will tee it up in Hawaii a few days after New Year's and the Australian Open will see my man Roger Federer win yet another Grand Slam. I knew it was going to be a long, grueling fall the moment the Mets imploded back in September. And although it looks like the Giants will make it to the playoffs, in my heart I've always been a Buffalo Bills fan. I guess I become something of a figure skating aficionado this time of year, but that's only because there isn't much else on the telly. Congratulations do go out to my compatriot Yuna Kim for taking the gold medal in Torino, Italy at the season ending ISU Grand Prix Final. But it's another skater who's been on my mind lately--Tara Lipinski. While for many I'm sure she's already melted away into the icy landscape, I've never forgotten how she outperformed her chief rival Michelle Kwan at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan to skate away with the gold medal. Kwan, of course, had been widely tipped to take the gold. When she didn't, she came back in 2002 to try again, only to secure bronze. Four years later in 2006 saw her sad withdrawal from the Olympics before the competition had even started. Why is this piece of skating history doing figure-eights in my mind as of late? Because it's echoing what Barack Obama is about to do to Hilary Clinton--snatch away the nomination that everyone just a few months ago had already hung around Hilary's neck. When two individuals both demonstrate technical brilliance, the judges always go with the one who shows more "heart." That's why Nancy Kerrigan (dressed in Vera Wang) lost out to Oksana Baiul in Norway in 1994. And that's why Hilary is doomed to take silver. And why Huckabee is following suit next November. God, there really must be nothing else on TV. Oh yes, did I mention that I finally learned the rules of snooker?