off to the showers

I've been stuck in bed for four days now, and sad to say, it's the best place for me. Every hour, I try to get Sammy to eat and drink, settling for a bite, downright giddy should he show more interest. Getting out of bed and into the wheelchair is so painful that I bypass Salty Tears and go straight to Total Despair.

It's not my shoulders, I don't think, because they don't hurt more than normal -- and my fever is actually higher than is usual. If you really want to know, I think it's a delayed reaction to the losses achieved by virtually every one of my Wimbledon favorites.

Yes, from the Belgian women [Vera Zvonareva just defeated Kim Clijsters] to sexy Andy... from... Oh, hell. I cannot get over Andy's loss. That was likely the blow that inflamed every freaking one of my osteoporotic joints. Huge congratulations to Yen-Hsun Lu, of course. Ranked 82, unseeded, the Taiwanese player's win was his first in four years of Wimpleton competition.

There is so little known of him that you will quickly become inured to the fact that his dead father was a chicken farmer. There are only so many ways that even the most talented of journalists can find to say "son of a chicken farmer."

Roddick and Lu had played three matches prior to this, Roddick winning all three. I confess to not paying great attention to this meeting, as I suffered from Assumptions.

Still, my interest flickered when the second set went to a tie-breaker. And again, when Roddick's return of service stayed perfectly flat. The last set was clearly his best, too late. Darned son of a chicken farmer!

When Roddick responds defensively to a lesser player playing hot, he opts for predictable safety, and fails to convert, fails to aggress. He just generally fails. So while his play since returning to competition after his knee surgery truly is excellent, the mind and an inhibited strategy cannot be trumped.

Lu, on the other hand, went with a more zen approach: “Today I just take a time, serve regular, and stay with him, try to find a chance and to win the set, set by set, set by set, until end, I shaking hand and I win. Yeah, I just don’t think.”

Lu's next opportunity for mindless advancement? Novak Djokovic, in the quarterfinals.

Is there an answer to why Andy only managed to convert one of eight break opportunities or is it as simple as complaisancy, and perhaps the last piece of his particular puzzle?

Clearly, he has improved tremendously as a result of intensely rehabilitating his knee. When he is "on," there's nothing finer!

No, complacency is the wrong word. Not self-satisfied, not unaware of trouble or danger.

Not non-chalant, either -- coolly unconcerned or indifferent. Not without warmth or enthusiasm.

I am at a loss. The danger is that I will choose an outside agency -- the wind, the sun, the stress, maybe even Yen-Hsun Lu, himself.

Never underestimate the son of a Taiwanese chicken farmer.

Now that all my picks have been eliminated, whom do I now choose to jinx? Let's see... I think I'll go out on a limb and choose Serena (Venus was eliminated this morning). What can I say -- I am a daredevilish sort. On the men's side, anyone but Roger, please. I love Nadal, but am very fond of Soderling. So... anyone from that side of the draw, I guess!

Berdych, I don't know at all. Ranked 13, on paper, he doesn't look to stand much of a chance against Federer. The great news is that the paper won't be playing. The awful news is that, after his shakey first two matches, Federer has cranked everything up a notch, and pretty much destroyed Jurgen Melzer on Monday.

The dirt on Berdych is that he tends to choke... if ever there were an occasion amenable to choking, I am guessing that the Wimbledon quarters is it. *

Okay, well, I am soaked in sweat. I am going to head for the shower to desalinate.
If that wasn't already a word, it is now.


* Okay, so this would be me, a day later, eating my words. Yum, yum! Not only did he not choke, Berdych won. Meaning that he elevated his play, looked awesome, and totally embarrassed Roger Federer, who proved less than sporting during his meeting with the press afterward. Instead of acknowledging Berdych's superior play, he produced a litany of his physical woes, and claims to have "[given] the match away." You don't get to Federer's level of competence without a healthy ego, but it would be nice to see some humility. Berdych earned his win today with deep and powerful shots, great movement on the court, and great serving. Congrats to the Czech!

Djokovic will face Berdych in the semifinals, and Nadal takes on... MURRAY! Yes, he finally has broken through and you know the Brits must be going crazy...

The other shocker today -- Serena and Venus Williams were ousted from doubles competition by Elena Vesnina and Vera Zvonareva.

The women's semi is set up as follows: Serena Williams vs. Petra Kvitova and Vera Zvonareva vs. Tsvetana Pironkova. That's right -- no Venus, no Kim Clijsters, no Justine, no Maria Sharapova. It's almost as if only Serena got the memo this year...

And, just because this is my blog and I feel like it, I would like to renew my plea for women's play to extend to best of 5-set matches. Slow-starters are often doomed in the 3-set system, and matches can end in a ridiculously short period of time. Wozniacki was out in 46 minutes! Billie Jean King has been calling for parity for over 30 years now... It's time to listen to her. In 2007, she was interviewed by NPR following the Wimbledon Committee's decision to provide equal prizewinnings to men and women players.

ROBERTS: There's an argument to be made that women tennis players play best of three, men play best of five. Often the women's matches are not as tough because there's not as much depth of field and that it's not equal work. So we're not talking about equal pay for equal work. What do you - what's your response to that argument?

Ms. KING: Well, first of all, in the entertainment business you don't get paid by the hour. And secondly, we've always been willing to play three out of five sets and if anyone knows the history of Wimbledon, they would know that when women first started to play back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we did play three out of five. But you have to remember, we played in a corset, a full-length dress, couldn't show our ankles or our wrists. and I think one of the women that was participating back in the old days fainted or didn't feel very good and therefore the all-men committee decided that they would only let us play two out of three sets.

ROBERTS: So they shortened the sets instead of foregoing the corsets?

Ms. KING: You got it.

John Henderson took on the topic during Wimbledon 2008:

The origin of women playing three rather than five sets goes back to when sports were run exclusively by men who took the patronising view that women, poor dears, could not possibly compete for as long as their male counterparts.

This attitude is changing in other sports, particularly in athletics. For years, the Olympics allowed women to run no farther than 800 metres - the 1,500 was not introduced until 1972. Now women run all the distances, including, of course, the marathon. Britain's world-record holder Paula Radcliffe has shown conclusively that stamina, which has been defined as simply the guts to go on, is not a gender thing by doing a faster time than all her male compatriots, as well as female, in the London Marathon.

Stamina, the guts to go on. I like that.