As many of you know, I am a sports enthusiast. I will watch almost any sporting event -and I mean actual sporting events, thus eliminating NASCAR and bowling -and will find something interesting about it.
Nevertheless, tennis has always seemed a little weak to me. It's not that I don't like the sport; I've just never found myself completely caught up in the moment the way I get caught up in the seventh game of the World Series.
But after the 2005 Australian Open, I must admit I've changed my view.
After watching a few matches of the women's tournament -mostly following the fate of my European girlfriend Maria Sharapova -I found myself tuning in for the final match between the defining player of our generation, Serena Williams, and Sharapova.
It turned into an epic battle of two players who clearly respected, but did not like, one another. I was hooked.
I started paying more attention to the men's tournament, hoping for another great match-up between rivals Roger Federer and Andy Roddick. But when both Federer and Roddick lost, I was left with a match between Marat Safin and Lleyton Hewitt.
Originally I thought Safin-Hewitt sounded more like an investment firm than an athletic event, but with my skin itching from a weekend without football, I needed a fix of something.
There was one other problem: The match, live from Australia, was airing on ESPN at 3:30 a.m. That's past my bedtime.
But after a night out on the town, I found myself at a friend's house with seven guys excited to watch. As near as I can tell, that made us 70 percent of the American population that watched the match live.
The match started off rather dull. Hewitt, a native Australian, took the first set 6-1 and made Safin look confused and fatigued. Our crowd energy was affected; it was nearing 4 a.m., and a blowout wasn't what we were looking for. Nevertheless, an interesting match-up in the stands pitted Safin's Russian girlfriend, Dasha, against Hewitt's soap opera star, Bec Cartwright, in a battle of who's the most seductive fan. We were willing to watch on.
Safin came back with a vengeance in the second set. He dropped the first game but never looked back. Keeping his trademark temper intact, he rolled Hewitt, 6-3. My interest was piqued.
But Hewitt, in front of a rowdy home crowd, wouldn't go down without a fight. Nonetheless, he lost, 6-4, and we were starting to lose members of our party.
Around 4:30, when Hewitt earned a code violation for thrusting his finger at an umpire, our group was sparked when a friend returned from work at a local sandwich shop with several loaves of fresh bread.
But the bread couldn't save our group any more than Hewitt's loss of temper could save the fourth set.
As the clock ticked past five and members of our group slowly let their eyes take match point, my roommate Jared and I slipped out the door and hustled home to watch the finale.
When Hewitt shanked a forehand on match point, I believe I was half of the American population awake for the end of the match. But what a match America missed.
With more drama than an episode of All my Children
the final match of the Australian Open got me hooked on big-time tennis. The raw emotion of the one-on-one match play has me waiting for more.
It also has me waiting for Dasha to call.
-Cottrill is a senior English major who can't believe that his column is about tennis and not the Browns hiring Romeo Crennel as their next head coach. If you want to hear how early in the season (November) Cottrill called that, send him an e-mail at michael.cottrill@ohiou.edu. 17
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Mike Cottrill
