Federer, Hewitt, Henin Win Titles; Fed Says Round Robin Dead

Abierto Mexicano TELCEL Presented by HSBC
Acapulco, Mexico

Finals:
(4) Juan Ignacio Chela (ARG) d. (8) Carlos Moya (ESP) 6-3, 7-6(2)
Starace/Vassallo Arguello (ITA/ARG) d. (1) Dlouhy/Vizner (CZE) 6-0, 6-2

Chela beats the two-time former champ Moya on the red dirt after losing in the final last year, his first title in almost three years. "I had several chances to win it and couldn't," said the 30-year-old former No. 1 Moya, his best days past him, even on clay. "In the tiebreak I got nervous because I thought a bit too much about my lost opportunities."

Qatar Total Open
Doha, Qatar

Finals:
(1) Justine Henin-Hardenne (BEL) d. (2) Svetlana Kuznetsova (RUS) 6-4, 6-2
(WC) Hingis/Kirilenko (SUI/RUS) d. Szavay/Uhlirova (HUN/CZE) 6-1, 6-1

Who says you can't skip a Slam and still compete for No. 1? Henin improves to 10-1 on the year, winning her second straight title and closing on the top-ranked Sharapova, who has competed in only one event in 2007.

Abierto Mexicano TELCEL Presented by HSBC
Acapulco, Mexico

Finals:
Emilie Loit (FRA) d. (5) Flavia Pennetta (ITA) 7-6(0), 6-4
Dominguez Lino/Parra Santonja (ESP) d. (2) Loit/Pratt (FRA/AUS) 6-3, 6-3

Loit wins her third career title and first in Mexico, coming from breaks down in both sets on the red clay. "I wasn't able to win this tournament before so I'm really happy because it's my favorite tournament," the Frenchwoman said. "It's like a vacation here. I like the beach, the hotel. It's just a beautiful location. I like Acapulco." Loit came up short of sweeping the event, losing in the doubles final with Aussie partner Nicole Pratt.

THIS WEEK:

Pacific Life Open
Indian Wells, CA, USA
March 7-18, 2007

The women's draw will be released Monday, the men's on Tuesday.

TENNIS-X NEWS, NOTES, QUOTES AND BARBS:
Rafael Nadal on his mental state in 2007: "My problem is not my tennis. My problem is consistency in the head. The head is not there. Mentally I am not tough."...From The Times' incomparable Neil Harman: "There is an hilarious scene in Monty Python's Life Of Brian when a bystander reacts to one of Brian's diatribes with the catcall: "He's making it up as he goes along." That is how men's professional tennis appeared to be run yesterday when James Blake was knocked out of the Tennis Channel Open in Las Vegas, was reinstated by the ATP, then told by the same organisation that he was out again. The real victim ought to be the round-robin competition format that was introduced as an experiment at the start of the year but, inside two months, has caused untold problems and must be dropped without delay."...Patricio Apey, part of Evgeny Korolev's management team, when ATP Chairman Etienne de Villiers announced James Blake was hand-picked into the Las Vegas quarterfinals rather than his client: "The ATP says they're changing the rules to help the fans and if that's the case, they should pay for some clowns to come and put on a circus."...From the Las Vegas Review-Journal on The Tennis Channel Open: "Last year, the city spent $778,000 for "tennis tournament support." Tennis court reconstruction came in at $634,000, according to financial records. The records did not break down the expenditures more specifically, and it was not clear how much, if any, of the money went to things like tickets for tennis tournament VIPs." -- One thing you can look into is how the company laying the courts initially left too little room in the back court, according to a source, and every court had to be totally redone -- check it...And from Ed Graney of the LVRJ: "[Alexandra] Stevenson was dismissed by Angela Haynes 6-7, 6-1, 6-1 on Wednesday in a first-round match of a USTA Pro Circuit Challenger, a sideshow to the Tennis Channel Open and basically the equivalent of a Double-A baseball game in Tulsa, Okla. Stevenson refused comment after her match, walking much quicker to the locker room than she moved on the court all day, followed by a mother who continues to accompany her daughter to matches while exuding what resembles a disturbing amount of control over Alexandra's career given her age. Example: During the first game of the second set, Samantha Stevenson chastised her daughter's coach for speaking to a reporter after the first set, then asked the reporter to leave. Minutes later, noticing everyone had kept their original places in the near-empty bleachers, Stevenson's mother moved herself and the coach 15 feet away, muttering that she didn't want her daughter to see him speaking with anyone."...From Wendy M. Grossman of The Register: "As YouTube cleanses itself of unofficial Oscars footage, tennis fans report that home edited videos of match highlights are also being removed from the site. These homemade highlights, often the only way fans can see video from distant, smaller tournaments, are being taken down at the request of organisations such as Tennis Australia and the United States Tennis Association, which run two of the sport's four biggest annual events...But does it make wider sense as a policy for the sport to pursue? Interest in tennis has been shrinking in the US (although it's expanding in Asia and holding its own in Europe) since the 1970s and 1980s, when charismatic American superstars like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Billie Jean King, and Chris Evert drew in millions of people. Andre Agassi, who did the same job in the 1990s, retired last year. Australia currently has few top players despite a glorious history...The sport's management has been slow to understand and grasp the internet. The Grand Slam websites, created by IBM, do show video highlights -- but these are adamantly Microsoft Internet Explorer-only. With rare exceptions -- notably the Moscow event, which has offered live streaming video for some years now – few other tournaments offer even that. It's only in the last year that the pro tours have begun offering video clips on their own sites. Yet this is a worldwide sport that should be cultivating its next-generation audience any way it can."...From tennis writer Matt Cronin: "The WTA has tweaked its Road Map 2010 (which will actually begin in 2009). In a new document that's floating around, the tour has reduced the number of A-level tournaments to nine from 14, and added a new level called "national." That sounds like a B-plus level (tournaments can recruit two of the Top 6 players, or one of the Top 6 and two of the Top 13), which might satisfy the USTA and its US Open Series tournaments at Stanford, Carson (LA) and New Haven, as well at Charleston, currently a Tier I. Or it might not, if they aren't allowed to buy in at the level that they desire. There are now seven slots for those $700,000 B-plus national events plus another four for the pre-Grand Slam weeks, which have no limitations of the number of stars they can recruit. There are 29 B-level tournaments ($225,000), which can only recruit a Top-10 player if she meets all of her commitments, which won't be easy. As of this writing, a Top-10er must play all four Slams, another four WTA "super" events (two, two-week combined events, another two nine-day combined tournaments, the Championships, as well as a portion of the five A-level seven-day tournaments, where seven of the Top 10 have to show. Since announcing the close of the application process in January, the tour has added one more calendar spot to its 2009 calendar (48 to 49 tournaments)."...Rafael Nadal, accusing the Hawkeye line-calling system of jobbing him, with a call costing him the first set in his loss to Mikhail Youzhny at Dubai: "I lost the first set in the last point because I saw, and the referee (umpire) knows because he saw the ball outside. The mark of the ball was still on court and it was outside but in the challenge it was in, so that's unbelievable." Nadal said umpire Roland Herfel agreed the ball was out, but by rule couldn't go against Hawkeye's call. "I say to him, 'Look, the ball is out,' and he say 'I know.' The truth is put Hawkeye on clay this year and we will see. You will see what's happening with Hawkeye sometimes. Youzhny agreed the ball was out." From tennis writer Matt Cronin: "Two lines people told TennisReporters.net recently that Hawkeye can be inaccurate when its cameras are placed at odd angles and that does happen at different tournament locales as the available spots for the cameras change. Also, the system is apparently much weaker during twilight hours. The lines people also say that they don't see as well when the shadows begin to creep in, either."...From ESPN's Greg "The Ugly American" Garber on a movie being put together about former tennis and current pro golfer Scott Draper: "The pitch goes something like this: An Australian tennis whiz wins the junior doubles championship at Wimbledon at the age of 18 but is very nearly paralyzed by obsessive-compulsive disorder...One day, cold turkey, he forces the oppressive disease into remission with another, more powerful, part of his mind...He marries sweetheart Kellie, who is afflicted by cystic fibrosis...As her health deteriorates, he plays the best tennis of his life, and wins a prestigious title at The Queen's Club just before she dies at the age of 23...After 18 months of debilitating depression, golf becomes a grieving tool for him...He wins a Grand Slam tennis title, the 2005 Australian Open mixed doubles, while playing in his first professional golf tournament at the same time, yet a knee injury forces him to retire from tennis six months later...He begins 2007 as Lleyton Hewitt's coach at the Australian Open and wins his first professional golf title less than one month later...At 32, he embarks on a second career, with aspirations (and, perhaps, the skill) to play the PGA Tour in America. "Sometimes," says Draper's mother, Bronwyn, "truth is stranger than fiction. It's an amazing story, even to those of us close to him."...Mario "Baby Goran" Ancic is reportedly out of action until the French Open with glandular fever...Rafael Nadal says he has gone back to his old spinny serve and motion after failing to find short-term success with a new grip and flatter, more penetrating serve...India's Sania Mirza is expected to be out from early March to early April with a knee injury...From Gulf News: "Roger Federer has always been a hit at the Dubai Tennis Stadium. But even the world's best player was upstaged last night by a doughnut! Krispy Kreme -- a well-known brand of doughnuts -- was officially introduced to the Dubai public yesterday. With red-hot Tommy Haas taking just 49 minutes on centre court, the crowd had nothing much to do till the Federer-Dokovic match scheduled for 7pm. So they did the next best thing -- they simply headed to the public parking lot opposite the Dubai Tennis Stadium and picked up a box, if not two or even three, of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The doughnut company has been distributing free doughnuts to introduce the new product to the people of the UAE since the past five days. There were two truckloads of doughnuts parked in the lot for free distribution and the tennis fans were simply lapping it all up literally." -- Welcome to American-style obesity...World No. 1 Roger Federer has proclaimed the ATP's round robin system dead: "Everybody knows I was against it in the first place. It's actually very disappointing to see things like this had to happen first before you realize that the system is not going to work. Nothing against [ATP Chairman] Etienne de Villiers, he's trying his best. But all I hope is he doesn't change the integrity of the game...He's burned his hands on that, that's for sure, and I doubt it's going to happen next year, the round robin system."...Reportedly prize money at next year's Doha event will be doubled, if you can imagine that. This year it was increased by 140%...From Tennis.com: "The German tennis federation is looking at whether the Hamburg Masters will continue to be on clay in May or move to the fall and be held indoors."