Hello All. It is a new year and I am back. I promise that this year I will be blogging more than ever to bring to the eyes of the world all things tennis all the time, at least that which I can get on tv. I have now relocated to Jamaica and one of the things I do not have is Tennis Channel. Now that may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing. For right now it is a bad thing as Tennis Channel usually has good coverage of MS events, but little or no coverage of the women's events, you know the ones, Mandatories, Premiers etc. Anyway, I now have TSN (that is Canada's response to ESPN). I also have a ESPNI as well as a host of other ESPNs. The only problem is that because I am in Jamaica all of these channels are geared towards the Latin American market. Now I have nothing against that if but for the fact that I get to watch football (soccer to you North Americans) all the time. That would have been great except I do not particularly like soccer, so there you go.
Anyway, the new year has started and already message boards are abuzz with tennis being played. Live streams seem very hard to come by these days as folks over at tennis.com were visibly frustrated last night and early this morning with the Hopman Cup streams. I see from the tv schedule that Hopman Cup should be up on the tv by 4 January so I will be looking out for that. Oh, I am in Cayman now and back in front of my HDTV and Tennis Channel, so hopefully I will catch a little bit of it before I have to head back to Jamaica.
In December I watched via a livestream the playoffs for the Australian Open wildcard. I have to say that I am sorry a player that I had never seen much except for that one match against Dinara at the USO (Olivia Rogoskwa) but I like the mentality that she displays on court. In addition there was no drama to her, no fist pumps, no grunting, no smashed racquets. She just stepped up to the line and did her thing. What I liked about this match was not the play of the players themselves but that a Federation thought it would be a good thing to livestream their wildcard playoffs for all the world to see. Kudos to you Tennis Australia. I hope that other Federations take a leaf out of that book as it would be good to see the up and coming talent before it hits the big time.
Brisbane is on right now. I have not seen a ball being hit just yet but this is only the third day of the year. Tennis Channel is showing Davis Cup and WITC matches from days gone by. I would have thought they would have shown Classic AO matches in order to generate interest in the upcoming AO, but that would have been too easy. Anyway, maybe there are plans to do so. I will write them and enquire as to whether fans of tennis will be able to see Classic AO matches. Will keep you informed if I get a response but please do not hold your breath.
Until then have a happy new year and all the best for 2010 and beyond for tennis.
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