By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor

Good morning. This is the Tribe's daily post for discussing the live tennis at the ATP Masters Series event in Hamburg, or the WTA tournament taking place in Rome.

I spent the whole day sitting on the main court at the Rothenbaum Club in Hamburg. At the end of the day, I was able to reflect that not only have I now completed the Rafa Euro-spectator Slam, at least on on a non-calendar basis (it began at Roland Garros in 2007), but that my face, in the past few weeks, has finally stopped burning from the sun, having acquired its current colour on tennis courts in four countries in the past month. The venue is impressive - light and airy in spite of the structure that supports the retractable roof, and provides shade to the upper seats. I felt that it showcased the tennis extremely well, creating both space and intimacy.Apart from some empty seats up at the back, and in the boxes at the front, Hamburg was packing in a good crowd for most of yesterday - at its height during the first set of the Nadal-Starace match. The shadows from the retractable roof that you see on TV are much less distracting that you might expect - I barely noticed them. Many springlike green trees surround the club, and the grounds are spacious, with a strong selection of concessions for food and drink, and tables for the public to sit and eat, and enjoy the sun.

The secondary court, M1, is located right next to the main stadium, and it's easy to access for a few minutes, for those who wish to sample the matches there. It's noisy, but also has spacious seating, so it's unlikely that fans will miss out if their favourite is playing there instead of on the main court. Unfortunately, I missed all of the Murray-Simon match, due to a scheduling conflict.

Match Choice:

For me, this would be Nadal versus Murray. Their previous two meetings took place on hard courts, and both times the matchup proved compelling. Their match in Madrid last year was the most exciting live match I saw in 2007. I won't be there today, having arrived home in the small hours of this morning, but will be watching keenly. Naturally, Nadal is the heavy favourite. Murray has some weapons to use against him, though. Rafa's facial expressions were priceless after being dropshotted countless times yesterday by Potito Starace (photos coming in tomorrow's Crisis Center, along with plenty of others, including Roger Federer's noticebly briefer appearance against Jarkko Nieminen).

Player of the Day:

Among the players I saw yesterday, I have to award this to Nicolas Kiefer, who managed to put out the Rome finalist, Stanislas Wawrinka, in front of an enthusiastic home crowd. In my photos, he roars after taking the first set, conveniently right a the photographers (I was seated just a few rows behind them). In fact, this moment set me thinking - I wonder how much players give thought to the photo-opportunities created by their on-court body language, given the character story told by the images that result?

As for Kiefer's win, he managed to do it in two very tight sets, needing to break back in order to stay in the second, and save set points - I was sensing that if he lost this, all the momentum would be with his opponent. Wawrinka is coming off two weeks that involved a semifinal in Barcelona, and the aforementioned Rome final, so may be a touch weary. However, both players were performing well - Kiefer just seemed to have extra bite and depth on his groundstrokes when it mattered. After celebrating (sorry to KIefer fans - taking shirt removal pictures after the win was thwarted by people jumping to their feet and spoiling the view), he thanked the audience for their support yesterday, and said it had helped him through. I was totally caught up in the excitement of the moment, and was delighted for KIefer. The crowd atmosphere was very pleasant throughout, towards both players.

Weather Report:

In Hamburg yesterday, I found it oppressively hot in the middle of the day. In the forward rows there's no shelter from the sun. More sun and heat is forecast for today, and this unseasonable weather is now expected to continue right through the weekend. THis means that the courts should continue to play a tad faster than usual.

Meanwhile, in Rome some sun expected, in between clouds.

As always, enjoy today's tennis.

I have to admit that the first thing I thought this morning when I learned that Justine Henin has announced her retirement from tennis was that she'd decided to enter the contemplative orders. I've often called her the Sister of No Mercy, because of her nearly religious degree of dedication to tennis, and an ascetic streak manifested in her very welcome and, to me at any rate, admirable indifference to acting out the tedious role of Crossover Female Tennis Star Cum Budding Fashion Icon.

Call me crazy, but I admire tennis players who are content to be tennis players, rather than hankering to be movie stars, apparel designers, entrepreneurs or UN Ambassadors of world peace. Contrary to the fears of many, there is life after tennis just like there is life after college. In an ideal world, that would be the time to start strutting your stuff as chat-show host or catwalk model. Besides, if you did that,  you would know that while your fame undeniably has helped - and why should it not? - it wasn't the only reason you pulled down that highly cherished walk-on role in a sitcom overloaded with T&A jokes. All of us seek validation and clarity. Justine apparently just found some.

I will miss Justine Henin. As some of her most ardent fans will happily point out, I've been hard on her: over the years, I've called her a "demented dwarf" (Sheesh, Pete, did you really write that one?), the Little Backhand that Quit, and, not entirely snidely, referred to her as Justine d'Arc. At times, the incessant self-absorption, the party-pooping gravity (if she appeared in the Periodic Table, her designation would be Pb, no relation to me), even that overwrought tale of her bond with her late mother eventually irritated as much as moved me.

Lighten up, I often wanted to say, you're neither the first person to experience hardship, but you may be the first to attempt to define or, in the worst case, justify yourself because of it. Justine has now cast off the burden, it appears, although I doubt that lightening up is on her immediate agenda. There's a certain romance to taking oneself so seriously.

I will still miss Justine Henin. The other day, while moonlighting for ESPN, I wrote a post on Novak Djokovic's shrewd if not entirely noble mastery of "career management." Some of the things I said about Djokovic apply equally to Henin, and apart from anything else they have shown a comparable degree of overt, blinkered professionalism. Don't you get the feeling that Djokovic is just dying to be a great player, the top player, in exactly the same way Justine once did? That appears to be a thing of the past for Justine; the baton of professional solemnity has been passed.

Writing about Djokovic, I suggested that the less savory stunts he has pulled, or been accused of pulling, must seem justified in his own mind because - well, look where they got him. And I argued how other great players did no less thoughtless and inconsiderate things than quitting during matches when things weren't going their way, or cagily manipulating their schedules, in order to attain their goal. By and large, the world quickly forgave and moved on; their ability to get to the top was more admired than their machinations were remembered.

Some fans of Serena Williams never will forgive Henin for the way she sandbagged Serena in that infamous Roland Garros "raised hand" episode, and fair enough. But you can't stop the water flowing under the bridge, and if you do it's likely get all backed up and become a foetid swamp. I'm no longer viscerally upset by that controversy, or by any of the other ones. Isn't the theme song to every successful tennis player's life that masterpiece of naked and bombastic self-justification, Sinatra's My Way?

Last year at Roland Garros, I had a chance to sit with Justine and two other reporters on the day before the women's final. Once again, I found her appealing in that kind of face-to-face setting. Her gravity reminded me of certain children who, by age six, have embraced a serious hobby like stamp collecting, or already seem to know that life isn't all it's cracked to be on the Disney Channel.  Justine must have been that sort of wide-eyed, quiet child, only the hobby was tennis. This is girl who was playing by that age; she's retiring after what is, in reality, a 20-year career.

I'll miss Justine because, well, who else is going to win 10 tournaments and dominate the tour the way Henin did in 2007? Who else is going to bring such pure, blue-flame professionalism to an arena that's grown increasingly crowded by half-hearted, no-hearted, and bleating-hearted idiot savants who have no idea of how good they have it, nor any seeming interest in doing the single, solitary thing that may distinguish them from the woman riding the subway to work with you, or delivering  your mail - playing tennis at an extremely high level, with the kind of dedication that is a given when found in a comparably accomplished neuro-surgeon, hedge-fund manager, ballerina or author. When it comes to representing tennis as a worthwhile profession and something worth doing for its own sake, Henin may not have been perfect, but she had no peer.

This, by the way, points toward one component in her popularity, especially among the real connoisseurs of the game. She appeared to play tennis for its own sake, because it happens to be a game that can be played not just effectively, not just successfully, not just interestingly - it can be played beautifully.  Henin, just 25 and an almost frail 5-5 and 126 lbs., played it more beautifully than any woman of her time. At the moment, I'm reading a book (a gift from Kamakshi), Catch and Release, by Mark Kingwell. As he put it,  in a meditation on casting a fly rod, "Can something that is beautiful also be useful? More than that, can its beauty come not as a surcharge to utility, but precisely as a function of utility?"

Justine Henin answers that question for us, and I come to the same conclusion as Kingwell did: "The cast is beautiful not in spite of its interest (purpose) but because of it. Beauty here is not superadded to, and so not separable from, utility."

I'd add one thing to that: Nobody with as beautiful a game has ever had to work so hard to reap its rewards. She had the mentality of a grinder and the strokes of a woodland fairie.

Actually, her decision to retire was foretold by her recent slump, and perhaps even prophesied by the banner year she had in 2007. While talking about this with Tomahawk Perrotta this morning, he suggested that we're seeing a replay of Mats Wilander, circa 1989 (the year after he won three majors and reached the no. 1 ranking). Wilander put his heart and soul into 1988, and discovered in 1989 that there was nowhere else to go - furthermore, there was nowhere else he wanted to go.

Wilander never won Wimbledon, nor did Henin. It's a pity, and the source of my only quibble with her decision to quit. As my editor-in-chief James Martin said, "I can't figure out why she didn't just quietly withdraw from these clay events and give herself one more shot at Wimbledon, one last shot at a career Grand Slam, before she decided to call it quits." I have to believe that she thought of that, or if she didn't, then her lifetime coach, Carlos Rodriguez, did. She must have rejected the idea. That she felt impelled to quit right here and right now, is probably a measure of how little she has left in her emotional tank.

I will miss Justine because for a small woman easily seen as a little girl, she the capacity of her emotional gas tank was comparable to that not of a Ferrari but a HumVee  - and if she had the armor as well, so be it. I will miss her because she gave professionalism in tennis a good name.

May the road rise with you, Justine.

As most of you already know, Justine Henin has announced that she is retiring from tennis. I'll write a full post on this later, but for now that's the breaking news. For those of you who enjoy National Public Radio, I'm going on air with them at 11:15 a.m. to do a brief interview on this development. It's a sad day for tennis, and also for one of our junior Elders, Samantha Elin, whose willingness to defend Justine knew no bounds.

By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor

Good morning. This is the Tribe's daily post for discussing the tennis that's taking place at the ATP Masters Series event in Hamburg, and also the WTA event under way in Rome.  By the time you read this, I hope to have arrived in Hamburg to see the day's events at first hand.

Match Choice:

Today's Order of Play involves the Top 3, so there's plenty on offer. From a personal perspective, it will surprise no-one that the match I'm most interested in involves Rafael Nadal versus Potito Starace. Nadal dipatched Starace in straight sets in Barcelona two week ago, and has never lost to him. His recent win occurred before the blister problems that hampered him during his loss to Juan Carlos Ferrero in Rome, however, so today's match should provide some kind of test of his current level test. From a neutral perspective, however, my match of the day is Marat Safin versus Tomas Berdych. Just a month ago, the two had their only encounter to date, in a Davis Cup match on clay, and Safin came from two sets down for the first time in his career to beat Berdych. I wish I had seen the match. The Czech has been suffering some injury problems (his ankle). Safin, meanwhile, is attemptimng to win four matches in a row for the first time in more than a year.

Player of the Day:

Yesterday's player of the day, for me, was Carlos Moya. He has not been having a good year so far, but rallied from behind to beat Julien Beneteau in a third-set tiebreak, after breaking the Frenchman when he served for the match. Besides, I know there are those in TW who would like to see a picture of Carlos today, even unshaven. While Andreas Seppi put in a strong showing against Ricchard Gasquet, controlling many of the rallies from the baseline,

Weather Report:

Hamburg, for the third day running, is expected to be sunny, with minimal wind. Rome, yet again, is expected to be plagued by heavy showers - the weather forecast for the enire week there is dominated by rain.

As always, enjoy the day's tennis.

Note: for anyone interested, I have finally uploaded some of the photos from last Saturday's Rome semifinals day. Most of them aren't of the semifinalists, of course, given the brevity of those truncated matches, but there are some pictures of the venue, and Goran Ivanisevic looking badly in need of a haircut, among others. The link is here.

[Here is Asad's strikingly original analysis of the Rome final; I addressed the "perspective" issue that Asad handles near the end of his post from a parallel angle in Monday's ESPN column. You know what they say, fried minds think alike - PB]

by TW Contributor Asad Raza

Yesterday, Ubaldo Scannagatta spoke the simple truth to Novak Djokovic: "You are the best player, this year at least."  Novel as it may sound, there is no longer any denying that Djokovic is currently tennis' dominant force--his curriculum vitae for 2008 contains titles at the Australian Open, Indian Wells, and now the biggest clay tournament outside of Roland Garros.  He has not only been outplaying Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal for the last five months, he has been outplaying them combined: this year, Nadal and Federer have one Master's title between them. 

Djokovic began the Rome final cautiously, perhaps in an attempt to feel out Stanislas Wawrinka in Wawrinka's first Master's final.  No collapse, however, was forthcoming from the Swiss player-- with his thumping groundstrokes, he quickly took advantage of Djokovic's refusal to immediately press for the advantage in points.  This established the pattern of the first set: Wawrinka winning rallies of about six to eight shots, each heavy Wawrinka forehand or backhand forcing Djokovic back until the killing stroke could be made. 

Losing the first set, Djokovic looked average in the face of Wawrinka's bludgeoning (and suddenly, Marat Safin's two losses to Stanislas didn't look so bad).  But then he wisely changed his tack.  Realizing that he had to take the initiative before Wawrinka did, Djokovic had to stop retreating behind the baseline to exchange battering topspin strokes (a style that favored Wawrinka) and start playing his own style: hugging the baseline and dictating play.

As a weapon, Djokovic's refusal to back up, or even lean back, is not as obviously recognized as, say, Federer's forehand, but it is the key to the twenty-year old's game.  When Djokovic is playing well, he hugs the baseline tighter than any current player in tennis (except for one -- Nikolay Davydenko).  But unlike Davydenko, who often whips through the ball with only his arm, Djokovic consistently leans his weight into each and every groundstroke, even on the run, even off of his opponent's deepest shots and fastest serve.  Simply put, it's the reason he can dictate to any topspin slugger.  Once he started leaning forward into every single ball, he began dominating rallies with Wawrinka almost easily.

The sweet spot is the best place on the string bed to hit the ball--but what about the best spot to hit the ball to?  In contemporary tennis, the sweet spot on the court is the backhand corner: a hard, deep shot into it moves the opponent back and out of position.  Both of the great champions above Djokovic in the rankings deal with this shot well: Federer usually resets the point with his superb floating slice (as opposed to his dagger-like slice), while Nadal gives up territory but has the make-up speed to negate the advantage.

Djokovic, however, defends his backhand corner better than either of them.  The method he uses is his signature shot: the stretch backhand that he hits with his left foot forward, in a fully open stance.  I'm not sure this shot gets enough appreciation--he is able to do two very special things with it, one of which is not to retreat from the baseline at all, even on very wide backhands. This is something Nadal, who typically hits those backhands from ten feet further back, cannot do. 

The other thing is that Djokovic can hit a good, forward-leaning topsin shot from that position, which is something Federer, who must slice from that position, cannot do.  The upshot is that Djokovic, unlike Roger and Rafa, plays symmetrically--he doesn't have to favor his forehand side, because his backhand is so solid, even offensive, under pressure.

The word that comes to my mind about Djokovic's game is efficacy: the stretch backhand is one way that he accomplishes it, but there are others.  In general, Djokovic rarely hits a spectacular shot, the way both his superiors in the rankings do (Fed is the most spectacular shotmaker I've ever watched; Nadal hits jaw-dropping passing shots).  Instead, Djokovic always hits the RIGHT shot. 

If you imagine the choices a tennis player is presented with on any given shot, you'll realize that there are two basic variables: the degree of difficulty you face to hit a shot, and the degree of difficulty it will then cause your opponent.  Somewhere these two lines, one representing risk and the other reward, cross each other on a graph to mark the smartest play: when playing well, Djokovic seems to live at this intersection.

One final thing that impressed me about Djokovic's win on Sunday was his volleying.  He has improved not only his technique, especially on the backhand volley, but his tactical grasp.  Recognizing that he was beginning to get Wawrinka on his heels, Djokovic began to approach intelligently--denying Wawrinka the chance to hit his way back into rallies, and further emphasizing his own control over the rallies.  It was a nice use of the patient attack style that pays special dividends on clay.

Despite his exceedingly effective style, Djokovic sometimes gets ahead of himself and starts fooling around, usually with boneheaded dropshots.  He clearly knows how good he is, and there are moments when, having demonstrated his superiority (to himself, as well as to us and his opponent), he loses focus.  This tendency seems a consequence of the size of his ambitions.  Djokovic has always looked at a bigger pictures than other of his generation (barring Nadal)--any smaller-goal (my first Master's series on clay, etc.) is quickly assimilated to the larger plan. When I asked him about clay-court tennis, his response quickly ballooned:

"I was aiming for Rome and, you know, for Roland Garros as my two priorities in this clay court season.  But, of course, you know, Hamburg is next week, so I'll try to do the best that I can there.  Try to recover in these two or three days.

So I'm very happy that I managed to win a major in this surface, because now I have more confidence approaching the big events on this surface, and on other surfaces as well.  So this year has been like a dream for me, but I want to continue.  I want to finish the year as the No. 1 on the race."

He moves almost too quickly to the larger perspective--calling Rome a "major," and treating Hamburg like a bit of an afterthought (is this a sign that he'll go down early there?).  He ended by giving voice to his real ambition this year, which is to dethrone the two more spectacular, yet perhaps less efficient and effective, players above him.  I wouldn't bet against him...