NADAL-MURRAY, FAVRE-CHAD, METS-MOYER, BRUCE WAGNER, ADAM NAGOURNEY'S TEETH ETC.

U.S. OPEN:

Let me summon all my expertise gained from 35+ years as a serious amateur tennis player and a little bit longer as a serious tennis fan to make the following assessment: Murray good! But back to some real time notes scrivened as I hop among the little lily pads of September Sunday sportive splendor:

Epic second game of 4th set. Phenomenal groundstrokes and movement by Murray. Then repeatedly squandered break point opportunities. The match feels like it's teetering on each point. Nadal's exrtaordinary will against Murray's extraordinary talent, movement and power. The world number 1 has looked, at times, truly ready to concede the superiority of his opponent. But he is certainly the only person in the world with the will to persist so gamely in spite of Muray's apparent invulnerability.

Rafa looks like he is going to miraculously survive. Never mind. Another unbelievable backhand winner for Murray to get it back to deuce. He is hitting some of the most extraordinary backhands I've ever seen. Right up there with Federer and Petr Korda. (Carillo's analogy to a Miloslav Mecir with power is excellent). We're on the 23rd point of the game! Every bit as high a quality of play as the Nadal-Federer tiebreaker in Wimbledon--except for a couple of clearly choked backhands by Murray when he had a chance to take total control of the match.

Amazing. Nadal prevails in an epic battle for survival--surviving 7 break points! What a fierce fierce will! Murray is 0 for his last 13 break point opportunities. Ok, the key now is to see if the younger player starts thinking about all those squandered opportunities and loses his mojo... Oops. It's already started. He's made two bad errors to start his service game. And Nadal can finally sense the possibility of a miraculous escape against a truly superior opponent.

Sloppy game by Murray. Nadal gets the break and a dramatic and-- for Murray-- devastating reversal. I'd be surprised how if Nadal doesn't win the set and, in all likelhood, the match.

Surprising start to the 4th game as Nadal makes two unforced errors instead of consolidating his lead. But Nadal fights back to deuce. And then to hold. You can feel Murray's mental slippage since that epic and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to break in the second game.

Oops. He's fought back to hold. Folly of prophesy. Folly of punditry. Folly of everything but shutting the f-ck up and seeing how the thing plays out. But don't think for a minute that'll stop me from prattling on!

Phenomenal break by Murray. Phenomenal maturity in keeping his head in this match despite the profligate squanderings. These moments of truth. When the match (and perhaps the tennis order of things) hands in the balance. Nadal fights off a break and holds to go up 5-4. Simply spectacular level of play. Murray is playing with a combination of grace, artistry, power and intelligence that is somewhat reminiscent of Federer. It's just aesthetically more satisfying to me than Nadal's brand of tennis.

As I think about it I guess that, In general, I prefer thinner more graceful players than those of the squatter and more muscular variety. The Nastia Luikin of Murray or Federer over the Shawn Johnson of Rafa Nadal. Hey, I guess I have to cop to being ectomorpho-centric. Although I came to love that little squat tumbler in the end.

And speaking of aethetic preference: Murray's girlfriend? Dang.

Murray holds impressively. Nadal serving now at 4-5. Amazing points by Murray. Artfully conceived. Perfectly executed.

Another masteriece of a point to get a break match point.

And he wins!!!! Amazing, amazing performance!!!

Shot of the gorgeous girlfriend please? Please?? Ehem, please?

Thank you.

The superior player clearly won. I'm a bit bummed that we'll be deprived of a Nadal-Federer rematch, but I found myself pumping my fist when Murray won.

Federer is going to have his hands full. This guy has crazy game. And the way he fought back from that potentially devastating second game of the fourth set and the subsequent service break really makes me feel that he's mentally ready for the big stage event. I see now that that he's trading at 35% to win on intrade. While I'm rooting hard for Federer, I think the ball spaking Scotsman is being slightly undervalued there. If he plays the way he played in this 2 day match and Federer plays the way he did against young Novak, it promises to be another match for the ages.

(And with all these young studs on the rise (Djokovic, Nadal, Murray), it seems that tomorrow is pretty close to a must win for Roger is he is going to eclipse Sampras's career mark. He needs three more to pass him and he has, at best, three more years in his prime. Winning one slam a year against this tough field will be an impressive achievement.

METS:

Mets fellate the Phillies yet again. Sad state of affairs when a 45 year old dead fish throwing pitcher owns you like livestock. When Jimmy Rollins' constant trash talking ends up proving the be nothing more than statements of fact. Pedro is, at 9 years Moyers' junior, just a shell of his former self. Argghh

Let's see if Johann can keep Mr. Met from being put on suicide vigil.

Really hope they can overcome the counter-productive pre-occupation with past failure as well as Murray did today against Nadal.

JETS:

It took just a few possessions of genuine ambivalence before my loyalty to Chad gave way to my life-long conditioning to root for the green jerseys--even if Dick Cheney and George W. Bush were wearing them. It's a Pavlovian association I am powerless to overcome. That said, towards then end, I found myself actively rooting for Chad to get his boys back in the game and end up outperforming Favre. And--at the risk of completely contracting what I have just said-- I think I was kind of rooting for him to exact revenge and get a miracle comeback win on the last play of the game.

Ultimately, I think the game provided the optimal outcome for people with my conflicted rooting interests. In a situation where there actually is such a thing as a moral victory, Chad got precisely that: Equalling and perhaps even outplaying Favre with a far inferior offensive line and leaving the game with the gratification of having left a turd of fear in the boxers of the Jets management who gave up on him.

NFL:

Poor Tom Brady. Just when he finally got out of his post Super-Bowl fetal position, he tears his ACL and out for the year. Poor guy can't even get into a fetal position now. And how is he gonna get on one knee to propose to Giselle? Joking aside: Genuinely feel for the guy. That totally and completely spews. And the frequency of these kind of early season , season ending injuries in football is one of the main reasons I've never loved the sport quite as much as basketball or baseball. (Oh...and also that the Jets usually suck.)

UNNATURAL SHOCKS OF THE DAY: (Only 865 to go)

Seeing Rafael Nadal absolutely winded.

Adam Nagourney's teeth.

QUICK POLITICAL COMMENT:

It strikes me as amazing that the Jon Stewart show is the only place where you can see the candidates (particularly the Republican candidates) directly contradicting themselves in consecutive video clips. This act of research and editing is marginalized as comedy but it is at some level simply accurate reporting. Not an editorial statement so much as a matter of the public record. Without gratuitously bashing the media (for I am no Republican!), I have to say that there seems to be some abdication of the journalistic responsibility to keep candidates honest. To engage in truth-telling rather than mere fact checking. Somewhere between what is deemed newsworthy and what is strictly editorial, this function of the fourth estate seems to get lost. Ok, Teddy V. is off his soap box and onto other things.

Speaking of soap box: Totally enjoyed both the Alec Baldwin interview on 60 Minutes tonight and the Alex Baldwin profile in the New Yorker. What a delightfully miserable human being.

GLOBAL SPORTS UPDATE:

The state of American athletic hegemony.

Yes, we managed to finally claim back the hoopic gold (barely), but here's a snapshot of two other sports we've traditionally dominated:

Tennis: All four guys in the U.S. Open semis are European. In fact, I think only one American has made it into the Semis of any of the Grand Slam events this year. (I think Blake made it into one, no?). Oops. No. Well, make that zero Americans.
Men's Track and Field: Jamaica has eclisped us.



CULTURAL OUTING OF THE WEEKEND:

Seeing the French thriller "Tell No One." A truly entertaining, rivetingly executed, beautifully acted thriller--that comes up just short of truly excellent due to its reliance on a long, ornate plot explication by a flinty old Frenchman brandishing a gun. One of the true delights of the movie was trying to decide whether the lead actor Francois Cluzet (above) looks more like a French Dustin Hoffman or a perfect fusion of Joe Mantegna, Sam Waterston and Leonard Cohen.

CREEPY ANECDOTE OF THE DAY::

A friend told me that while he was in L.A., he met a guy who, due to his resemblance to Heath Ledger, moonlights as a Joker impersonator. And he is trying to develop a movie called "The Joker Begins." So macabre and creepy that it feels like a sub-plot in a Bruce Wagner novel. (If you're not familiar with his work, Wagner is the sort of tortured intellectual conscience of Lala land whose masterpiece is a darkly acerbic, celebrity obsessed L.A. trilogy comprised of "I'm Losing You," "I'll Let You Go" and "Still Holding." If you want to check them out, I recommend the first or the last over the middle.)

OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

Saw an old Boston Legal episode in which James Spader defended a mentally challenged guy on death row. The episode ended with a brutally extended Dead Man Walking style execution scene that was all the more powerful for being so incongruous and unexpected. The alternation between the Spader story and the strictly comedic Shatner subplot, left the viewer completely off balance and completely vulnerable to the truly shocking intrusion of something so uncompromisingly and unapologetically real. This is a potential power of comedy that allows it, in certain rare genre-busting instances, to be even more powerful and disturbing than pure drama.

HUNCH OF THE DAY:

The next Republican Presidential ad will whisper the following words subliminally after each of the respective candidate names.

McCain (war hero, patriotism, free pizza)
Obama (dead babies, dead babies, dead babies.)

Let's all listen carefully and see if I'm right.

RANDOM CONCEPT OF THE DAY:

The cognitive foley artist.