Who’s playing where early on in 2010? Sean Randall has the answers.

Maria Sharapova won her first title in 18 months in Tokyo after Jelena Jankovic retired late in the first set due to a wrist injury.

What happens when the top players refuse to play the top WTA tournaments? Well, nothing really.

Tennis finally gets some good space in Sports Illustrated, but it’s in the Swimsuit Issue!

Big start to the New Year with just about all the top guys playing ATP events, including Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and the two Andys, Murray and Roddick, all in Doha.

While the ATP heads have been thinking of ways to screw with tennis, the top players have decided to (again) screw the Paris event. As of this writing Monday afternoon, five of the top six players have already pulled from the Tennis Masters Series event in Paris.

Taking a pass from Paris are Ivan Ljubicic, Andy Roddick, David Nalbandian, Rafael Nadal and today Roger Federer. The pulls mean Paris, which offers 2.6 million dollars, with two fewer Top 6 players than the $690,000 Vienna event earlier this month.

Big story this A.M. is the “shock” defeat of Roger Federer yesterday to Andy Murray at Cincy. I didn’t get the chance to see it live – hey, I’m working, okay? – but I caught the replay of the last set on ESPN after the Roddick match.

Fed clearly didn’t look like the Fed that we have known, and I wonder just how much the Swiss wanted to partake in Cincy. Fed added winning Toronto, Cincy back-to-back was next to impossible. Well Rog, Andy Roddick did it a few years ago if I remember correctly, so it’s not impossible. You just got to want it.

Well…I’m back from my last vacation of the year, or at least the last of the summer, and it’s catch-up time in the tennis world. Fortunately I had a cable TV handy, unfortunately I had to endure that fill-in Sean guy on ESPN.

As it was my vacation, I saw several other people vacationing also. Namely WTA stars like Justin Henin, Amelie Mauresmo, Venus Williams, etc. Okay, I didn’t see them but I get the feeling they along with a few others are enjoying their rest based on all the pulls from Montreal the past few days.

After playing an epic five-set 5-hours plus marathon in Rome on Sunday, not surprisingly both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer have decided to pass up playing in Hamburg, which would have required the two to compete on Tuesday.

I’m sure Hamburg tournament organizers were glued to the screen yesterday hoping the match would go short. But at soon as it went five you know they were sweating thinking these guys won’t post.

Okay…So clearly many of you are not seeing eye-to-eye with me on my position that the top female players on the WTA should be ashamed of themselves for only playing 41% of the tournaments at best. Thanks for the comments.

Folks…I get that Lindsay Davenport cannot play all 63 WTA events, or that she could even play half of them for a number of reasons. But my point is that tennis is a sport (the only sport i still wonder??) in which its best players are unable to play a full schedule and play less than half of the tournaments, which in most cases is less than 25%.

Anyone who watched the NCAA final last night in which the Florida Gators pounded the UCLA Bruins has to agree that Joakim Noah is a freak. Why? The kid is, according to announces, seven feet tall and can run and jump like a gazelle.

Now imagine in tennis a guy taller than Dr. Ivo Karlovic who can run and jump as well as say James Blake. Or just imagine James Blake as a seven footer! Ha.