Writing this goes against everything I’ve been saying lately, but I just have to get this off my chest.

WARNING: NOT FOR DIE-HARD FED-FANATICS!

Marat Safin will play on the Senior Tour next month.

I want to comment on Murray’s approach to attempting to win, let’s say, the last two Australian Opens. Last year he played an exhibition in Abu Dhabi and a warm up event in Doha. He won both, beating Nadal once and Federer twice. He was coming off a great 2008 where he won two Masters and reached the US Open final. In Oz, he lost to Fernando Verdasco in the 4th round.

Boy did Brisbane hit the jackpot in players.

he only thing that’s happened at these events is a bunch of qualifying matches have been played.

With everyone doing top 10 lists of the decade or the year, I decided to take a slightly different approach.

After three days of early round action, the top players finally hit the courts at the Paris Indoors, the final stop on the ATP’s regular season.

Notes: Weak, weak seeded line-up; tough openers include (1) Davydenko vs. Safin, (4) Andreev vs. Ginepri, (6) Tipsarevic vs. Crazi Dani, and (5) Cuevas vs. Lu (upset alert); Russians have won 13 titles in the 19 years of the event; unseeded Igor Kunitsyn is the defending champ, and is looking at a second-round meeting with the Davydenko-Safin winner; Davydenko looking for fourth Moscow title; Yevgeny Kafelnikov won the Moscow title five years in a row from 1997-2001.

Sean Randall breaks down the Shanghai third round matches.