The Heroes and Villains, Tennis Goes Daytime Drama.

After a much enjoyed off season, tennis kicked off early in January and in earnest the past fortnight with the Australian Open. Yet after not even a month, I can do with another off season in tennis. It's not the level of tennis that has tired me, it is the constant stream of negativity that is currently surrounding tennis. While I appreciate journalists being critical of players when warranted, tennis seems about stirring the pot when we need not to stir it and blow issues out of proportion in a magnitude that leaves me wondering, what the hell happened. Federer loses a match, he is done, Vika Azarenka takes an ill timed MTO and gets a little lost in translation post-match and she is nearly burned at the stake, and lets not begin to mention the grunting, I am so sick of the talk about grunting. And this is just the mere top of the iceberg. There is drama every corner we turn.
And if there isn't over-negativity, there is a turn to over-positivism. Yes, Na Li fought bravely through two falls during her final, but calling her a hero, really is a step too far.
Can we go back to a middle ground, give praise where it is due and a critical note when warranted, but can we keep in mind that after all is said and done, we are talking about tennis, not Days of our Lives.

Of baby!GOATS and Australian Open draws.

As I write this, it seems the collective tennis community has plunged into Australian Open draw panic. Draw panic? Yes, panic. Faves M and D will definitely lose in rounds 1 or 2 in their super heavy rigged draws, while fave X sees fans planning who will be met in which round despite a lack of form, and lets not start on fave Q who landed in the same quarter once again. Sound familiar? I guess it is what we do, and while we do it, we judge ourselves for doing it. The fact remains, the table has been set, and all we can do is wait whilst becoming sleep deprived.
But fret not, if your fave does crash out in round one or two, there is still hope. There is a Slam frazzle safe haven, where a win or loss doesn't mean all that much. Unless you go on to win the title, but more about that later.
The safe haven I speak of is the junior's tournament. Random losses are the bread and butter of junior's tennis and winning the title doesn't guarantee your mini star a grown up Slam or easy breakthrough, so any match can just be approached as fun!
My tactic of picking juniors to follow is simple. By name. If I like your name, you're in. It is how stumbled upon Pavlyuchenkova, Kvitova (yes I have a thing for ovas) and Ksenia Pervak.
Currently, I mostly follow the junior boys and I am sure they will all grow up to be extremely headcasey headache inducing players on the ATP tour.
But one of my kids sticks out. When he was only fourteen, there were some ravings of a leftie youngster beating the pants off his opponents in the under-18 category. As I have a thing for lefties, I was immediately intrigued and after some googling and web perusingI I found a young promising leftie, Gianluigi Quinzi or, as I like to call him, baby!GOAT. Or if I'm feeling particularly excited 'he is only still sixteen'. Which I'll need to change into 'he only just turned seventeen' in a few weeks.
Nevertheless, if you need a junior to watch, he's your guy. Steadily climbing the ATP ranking, from unranked to 562 in a year and already transitioning to the ATP tour through the hard work of futures, where you have to make at least the second round of the main draw for one tiny ranking point.
So join me in eagerly awaiting the junior's draw, finding your future fave and hoping for a nice tournament!