Good old Lleyton Hewitt

Otherwise, TV Tennis was pretty much a wasteland.
The day started innocently enough with ESPN2 showing Venus and Serena Williams winning another doubles match. Then came Tommy Haas and Novak Djokovic -- at least, part of their semifinal. But ESPN2 couldn't show any of the Roger Federer-Ivo Karlovic match due to the NBC embargo and had to abandon Wimbledon three games into the third set of the Haas-Djokovic match. So, viewers switched to NBC and had to watch the boring Federer-Karlovic match before NBC put Haas and Djokovic on until its conclusion.
Boy, was the Federer-Karlovic match an all-time dud for excitement. Karlovic seemed to play in slow motion on everything except his huge serve.
John McEnroe used much of his comments to hail Federer as the greatest player ever? He's great, but so were a lot of other players before him.
Put McEnroe and Mary Carillo together, and NBC is dull city, well behind the gang at ESPN2, even when Carillo chips in with Mary Jo Fernandez on ESPN2.
Viewers probably couldn't wait for NBC to hand coverage back to ESPN2 after three hours. But there was no word yet on Andy Murray's match against Juan Carlos Fererro or the Andy Roddick-Haas matchup. ESPN2 started showing what turned out to be an epic five-set Roddick-Hewitt encounter midway through the third set. Then came a taped version of Murray's straight-set win over Ferrero.
I really don't know why I was so eager to jump in front of the TV set early Wednesday morning. Between slo-mo Karlovic and NBC's Wimbledon-buster, there must have been something better to do.

HEWITT AND HAAS
You've got to hand it to Hewitt. The guy has heart. He could have gone away after coming unglued in the third-set tiebreaker. Roddick never relented, and Hewitt finally surrendered.
But Haas? This guy may be Melt-Down-Tommy, but he may have tennis' most complete game, even better than Federer's. Now if Tommy had Federer's head.
Haas practically handed Federer victory in the French Open after being up two-sets-to-none and five points from victory. Haas isn't likely to be fortunate enough to win the first two sets this time, but if he does it definitely will be more interesting than Federer-Karlovic.
Haas will be lucky to even show up this time against Federer.
It was disappointing to see Djokovic go down. After the withdrawal of Rafael Nadal, Djokovic may have been the only one who could go toe-to-toe with Federer. But in a role reversal, the Serb did the melting down against Haas.
Andy Murray looks terrific. He has the game to win it all. It just depends on which Andy shows up for the final -- Andy Murray or Andy Roddick.
Sure, Federer would like to see Roddick. Federer always talks about how much he enjoys playing Roddick. Federer said the same thing about Karlovic. That's no wonder after seeing the 6-10 Croat's slo-mo performance on Wednesday.
--
James Beck is the long-time tennis columnist for the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier newspaper. He can be reached at
Jamesbecktennis@gmail.com
--
See James Beck's Post and Courier columns at:
http://web.charleston.net/news/columnists/james_beck/

 

James Beck