Andy Roddick seeks his second ATP title in three tournaments Sunday in Atlanta.

Mardy Fish gets a first look at Ryan Harrison in Atlanta while Simon and Almagro battle for the Hamburg title on Sunday.

Mardy Fish beat up on friend Andy Roddick in the Atlanta semifinals.

James Blake lost his fourth straight match last night in Atlanta.

The dog days of summer tennis are upon as the top players are all enjoying some time off leaving us fans with little chew on.

Here’s a potential bell-ringer for your next executive meeting — tennis fans are changing the way they view the sport (on the internet) because YOU GUYS AREN’T SUCCESSFULLY GETTING TENNIS ON TV. We have a Tennis Channel, but it is mostly reruns and canned shows.

Nadal is not facing a radically depleted or wounded Roger Federer in the final. Federer won all 10 sets he played in picking up his 5th Halle title. Marcos Baghdatis and Nichols Kiefer stand out as solid wins in the quick transition from clay to grass. The Fed has also posted straight set wins over Robin Soderling, 2002 Wimbledon Champion Lleyton Hewitt, 2004 Wimbledon semifinalist Mario Ancic, and the enigmatic talent of Marat Safin. Nadal made a similarly quick and impressive transition from clay to grass, but he did so with the wind of victory at his back not the sting of humiliation. Federer has looked sharp at Halle and at Wimbledon.

I said going in that it was going to be tough to draw much value out of the Hamburg winner between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. And after Nadal’s topsy-turvy 7-5, 6-7, 6-3 win over Federer hasn’t changed my mind much.

If you are a fan of clay tennis, or really just tennis for that matter, you had to be impressed with the show Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal put on today in Hamburg.

A business trip has gotten the better of me this week, so I apologize for being late on the topic of Justine Henin’s retirement, but it really is the big tennis news of the week. And I was really stunned to learn of it.