OK let's start with a pic of Marco Chiudinelli in case you dont know the Swiss #3....



Now see how he greets his conquests at net....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43fbXkJho4 (At the 2:50 mark)

As long as I'm sharing, check out fromsport.com if you want to watch live tennis not televised here in the US.

And despite drooling over Marco today, my loyalty still belongs to Gilles Simon in hopes of qualifying for YEC....he's a longshot, but the other contenders seem to be dropping like flies. ALLEZ GILLES!!!!

Yes, he really is painfully handsome.

And just where the hell have you been, Goodguy(ret.)?!

Haha, just like Justine I'm baaaaack. No real reason, just needed a break I guess. But I was surprised to not see any discussion threads for recent tourneys. I was like um, I guess I didnt miss anything. But what did I miss.....any big fights here? Any other hot pics? Gay player theories? Groundstroke analysis? Yeah, right.

Great to see you here, informative and perceptive as always. I'd never seen Chiudinelli before. That post-match pat:

Gilles is doomed though, I'm afraid. I think he lost to Youzhny today...oh well, now he can improve again next year. I don't know if he'd be a deserving YEC player this time. Of all the slams, he only made it to the final 8 of the Australian.

I've been glad to see Baghdatis starting to play decent tennis again.

Chiudinelli has been on my eye candy radar for some time and this is a rare opportunity to actually see him play late in an event, although he's one of those players who seems to photograph much better than how they look when they are playing (Seppi is another - maybe it's a blond Alpine thing). Fed was gushing about how he'll be playing his BFF on court, so maybe we'll get some more pats on the tush after the exhibition-like match is played. We might have had three home favourites in the semis if Wawrinka didn't squander yet another chance to defeat Djoko (they seem to have had several hard-fought three-setters where the Swiss fails to close it out).

I expect Djoko to put up the same resistance against Fed in the final that he did in the Cincy final and USO semis - namely, just enough to look good. Still, I don't mind Fed swooping down on his home event and picking up the title without much in the way of perspiration; Rafa does it in Barcelona every year (speaking of which, surprised he didn't take a stab at Valencia, which seems to have a lovely indoor court much like the former Madrid event).

Stan played brilliantly up until the 2nd set tiebreak. After blowing the breaker, he really went away in the 3rd set. Stan beat Novak a couple of times back in 2006/7, but has blown a few matches he really should have won since then. Stan was in the top 10 last year but has since dropped to #21. One gets that sense that if he ever got over the mental hump with Novak, he'd work his way back into the top 10.

Chiudinelli is a total babe. He's gotta ditch the high socks, though.

Not exactly an inspiring Basel Final, but all credit to Djokovic, whose nerve was under control in a match he could have easily choked away. Especially with his Serve so unbelievably wild at times. He actually hit more than a few serves so far wide of the center service line that you'd have thought he was going for a body serve into the other court . After watching Federer's Errors give him the Break in the 9th Game, the First Set's 10th Game had Djokovic serving for the set. It was the longest of the match, going over 12 minutes. Federer saved 6 Set Points, and had 6 Break Points himself, 4 of which he squandered with inexplicable Unforced Errors, all off the Forehand side. Djokovic won the set with yet another Federer Forehand sailing wide. Djokovic ran to the chair, called for the trainer to get his back worked on. Then came out and broke Federer straight away in the 2nd Set before Federer regrouped and won it.

All downhill for Federer after that, as error after error kept flying off his racquet from both sides. He lost his first two serve games to go down 4-0. And the match ended with another Federer Forehand finding the net cord and sailing into the stands. It's the third time in five meetings this year Djokovic has beaten Federer, although today it was all about Federer's littering the stat sheet with Unforced Errors - 30. And it can't help Federer's confidence that he lost his serve 4 times today. Still, credit to Djokovic for holding it together mentally just long enough to beat Federer in his home town. But whatever is going on with his back won't help him in Paris this week.

Didn't see it, but Murray won Valencia against an overmatched Youhzny 63 62. But Murray did have a couple of 3-Setters there, one of them against someone named Leonardo Mayer ! And he was helped by the fact some of the guys who could have troubled him more lost before he could meet them, like Ferrer and Davydenko. Makes the Paris Masters kinda interesting.

Just like there's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, there's GreatestOfAllTime and Shankopotamus. Some of those FedErrors were threatening to take out a few light bulbs. Much to his opponents' chagrin, however, Shankpotamus sightings are few and far between (5th set AO final, 5th set, USO final, and today in Basel).

Sometimes, winning is just about hanging in there. I feel like that's what Novak did this week. Wawrinka and Stepanek both were playing terrific tennis, both thisclose (more so for Radek) to winning their matches, but Novak hung in there, waited for his opponents to come off the boil, and took the reins once they did. The final was more about hanging in there against his nerves and perhaps to some degree an aching back. Not a pretty final by any stretch, but I think there are some huge positives Novak can take out of this week.

Wait, actually it was Shankopotamus who lost to Novak in both Miami and Monte Carlo, as well as against Tsonga in Montreal. Hang in there, gents! Even the GOAT isn't always the GOAT all the time.

Count me as pleasnatly surprised. I figured Djoko wouldn't have it in him to pull out a win, after already narrowly escaping Wawrinka and Stepanek in gruelling three-setters this week alone, let alone similar escapes throughout the recent Asia swing or that marathon game just to close out the first set. He had some left in the tank after all. I thought maybe he'd do what he does in the late stages of Slams when he's similarly low on reserves, and just check out mentally and tennis-wise; it certainly looked grim when he squandered what threatened to be a double-break lead in the second set.

However, Fed really does reserve his shanktastic best for Djoko, doesn't he? Especially that infamous, racquet-smashing non-performance in their Miami match. I think he can't stand to lose to him, and it paradoxically makes him more likely to do so lately. That's part of what made their on-paper closely-fought yet never-in-doubt USO semi so mystifying - it took on an exhibition atmosphere suddenly, as 2H memorably put it.

At any rate, career slam and record number of slams, etc etc etc so no loss will ever, ever matter to him again, right? Especially not at a puny 500 event, home turf or not. It's so easy to dismiss his losses now - it's salad days for his supporters. However, at least it makes the year-end No 1 race slightly more interesting, even if I doubt Rafa has it in him to make a run for it now, unless Fed has more shanktastic days left in him this year and Rafa is ready to post back-to-back wins in Paris and London yet again, except in reverse this time. (In fact I'd think Fed is more likely to do it again - he didn't spend too much energy last week and is more well-rested than anyone besides Murray.)