Men's Tennis is Half Empty

While women's tennis is still filling the seats with natural sleights (see: Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, etc.), the men's tour is resorting to far more intricate and grossly unnatural measures.

Roger Federer fell today to apparent half-court specialist Rafael Nadal in one of the most meager, yet expensive tennis ploys in recent history. The court, which reportedly took 19 days and just over $1.6 million to construct, was built with the intention of eliminating the surface advantage which has dictated the outcome of the rivals' previous 6 non-hard court matches (they've split those 2-2).

While the clay/grass combo is an interesting concept, the result was not quite peanut butter and jelly, and leaves me and my buddy James as the reigning kings of gimmick tennis after my 6-2 victory last summer in which I used a 2x4 against his Pro Staff 6.2.