a bit on tennis

What on earth is the USTA doing in negotiating their TV contracts?????

Maybe it is just here or in the central time zone or whatever, but evidently the USA Network has to cut off their coverage of tennis at 11:30 our time or some such, and then CBS picks up the highlight show later. Except here anyway, we had to wait for another half hour of Letterman and a half hour of Extra if we wanted to watch. In the mean time, there is an amazing match going on between Agassi and Blake. Two Americans, one 35, the other a wild card entry because he broke his freaking neck 15 months ago. James Blake roars to a two set lead, playing the best tennis this side of Roger Federer I have seen in years. Then Agassi, down two sets and a break, gets a new gear, rallies to break back at 3-3 in the third, and put a seed of doubt into Blake. He wins the third and fourth sets, and then as we are just settling down to watch the fifth set, even those of us who thought we would be going to bed hours earlier, they have to interrupt coverage.

I pulled up the point by point coverage on ESPN.com, and now that I know the winner - Agassi 8-6 in the fifth set tiebreaker - now I am not going to watch the dang thing until it is an Instant Classic on ESPN. Because I will not reward the asinine jackass who wrote the contract that meant I couldn't see the end of this when I was absolutely transfixed. Dad gum it, I thought we had this all figured out with the Heidi game between the Jets and the Raiders back in the day. If the coverage had been seamless, and we had just had to change channels and announcers, that would have been okay. But the hour delay is ridiculous.

In the mean time, there have been three great American stories on the men's side of the draw, even with Roddick busting out. Agassi and Blake have been amazing. Agassi is the only player on the singles tour older than me, and he is more than 2.5 years older than me. Blake broke his neck and then lost his father to cancer a couple of months earlier. He is also the man who handled the racial epithet thrown at him by another player a few years ago, and made his way through Harvard. And then you have Agassi's semifinal opponent, who has come basically from nowhere to make a run to the semifinals by winning three straight five setters.

Grrrrr. And I played in an online poker tournament, and was busted out when a guy went all in with a gutshot straight draw when I had trip aces, and then hit it. That just isn't right. I win that hand and I am chip leader by 40% or so with twelve people left, and instead I am on the rail, out $1.20.