Voting is now open for the first annual Baseline Tennis Awards, organized by the On the Baseline women’s tennis site. Among many categories you can choose the Player of 2007, Newcomer of 2007, Best Website of 2007, and Best Blog of 2007.Voting will be closed at 12:00 AM (U.S Eastern Time) on December 22.
Go vote and have some fun.
The winners will be announced on January 1, 2008.
ESPN chat with Dmitry Tursunov
On Tuesday, Russian tennis player Dmitry Tursunov will join ESPN to talk about the Davis Cup and all things tennis. Tursunov beat Andy Roddick 17-15 in the fifth set of last year’s Davis Cup semifinal with the US team. You may send in your questions before the live chat. Tursunov is an eccentric funny Russian who grew up in Northern California since he was 12. He is the blogging king among the tennis players. Check out this interesting article about him in New York Times.
Marat Safin to play in Kooyong Classic
Handsome Russian Marat Safin will be among the eight players to participate in Kooyong Classic. The others are American Andy Roddick, Chile’s Fernando Gonzalez, Britain’s Andy Murray, Germany’s Tommy Haas, Croatia’s Ivan Ljubicic and Argentina’s David Nalbandian who got the last spot.
Third year in a row, Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova tops the list of Russia’s Richest Athletes by making $25 million in a year. The second athlete on the list Andrei Kirilenko (basketball player of Utah Jazz) earns $11 million less than Masha. The other Russian tennis players who made the list are Svetlana Kuznetsova (No 29, $2.3 mln), Nikolay Davydenko (No. 32, $2.1 mln), and Anna Chakvetadze (No 50, $1.4 mln).
The list was released by the Russian Finans magazine. The income numbers included the prize money and the money received from endorsements. Bonuses and prizes were not calculated.
Recently Sharapova also made the list of 25 richest athletes of the world and was ranked at 73rd on Business Week’s list of Power 100 most influential people in the world of sports.
(Source: Championat.ru)
New York Times has a story about Spanish tennis player Juan Carlos Ferrero’s recently inaugurated new luxury hotel near Valencia, Spain. Four years ago Ferrero bought a 19th-century house and 120,000 square feet of land and spent seven million euros to renovate it. The Hotel Ferrero has 12 suites, a swimming pool, a spa, two restaurants and, tennis courts. Rates start at 250 euros a night.
Ferrero is not the first tennis player who enjoys “playing” real estate. Andre Agassi and his wife, Steffi Graf — another tennis superstar— have hotels being built in Costa Rica and in Idaho.
For more photos visit hotelferrero.com. (The site is built in Flash which I find very irritating, but the pictures are beautiful.)
The Canadian Press reports that the former French Open champion Michael Chang has quit as a coach of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai. Peng is China’s top-ranked female doubles player along with another Chinese, Li Na. This year at the China Open in Beijing Peng was able to beat former world number ones Martina Hingis and Amelie Mauresmo on her way to the semis.
Chang said he had stepped down because of the time constrains. He is planning to sett up a tennis academy in southern China.
(Via Down the Line Tennis) World No 1 Roger Federer is among the honorees of this year’s GQ magazine’s “Men of the Year.” The complete list is available here.
Gossip sites are reporting that U.S. tennis star Serena Williams is dating rapper and actor Common (real name is Lonnie Rashid Jr.). The new couple was spotted at Venus Williams’ new EleVen fashion line launch party.
The 35-year-old Common, who was linked to singer Alicia Keys, hit the charts on the number 1 spot earlier this year in the American music charts with his CD “Finding Forever.” You can currently see Common in the movie thriller American Gangster. You can check out Common’s new video “I want you” on YouTube. The video also features Alicia Keys and Kanye West.
Igor Andreev and Anna Chakvetadze were honored yesterday as the best tennis players of Russia in 2007. Russia’s Fed Cup has won “The Team of the Year” award.
Chakvetadze enjoyed a breakthrough year in 2007, ended the season at No 7 in the world and managed to win four titles. As to Andreev, I am not sure why he was chosen. He didn’t win a single title this year, however has been a very valuable player for Russia’s Davis Cup team. Championat.ru reports that Andreev received the award and didn’t even stay for the post-ceremony party. He hurried to watch the football (soccer for my US readers) game between Russia and Israel.
Andreev looks like as if he is waiting for his bride:-) And Anna has that ever-virgin look in her eyes.
The test results are back. Contrary to my predictions, the results are negative, no evidence that German tennis player Tommy Haas was poisoned in Russia during the Davis Cup semi-final. However, it seems that Haas is not 100 percent sure whether he was really poisoned or not. BBC quoted him saying. “It’s no longer an issue. The tests gave no results. It was too far in the past.”
Maestro Roger beats Andy again.
Deuce Magazine features Warrior David Ferrer, who conquered Rafa Nadal to play Swiss top gun Federer in Masters Cup final.
Nikolay Davydenko wraps up his Masters Cup performance with a win over Fernando Gonzalez and goes to the Maldives to get some rest before Davis Cup final.
The German Tennis Federation plays down the Tommy Haas poisoning allegations.
Russia’s Davis Cup Captain Shamil Tarpischev reveals some of his secrets on how to motivate a player. In last year’s marathon match between Tursunov and Roddick, Tarpischev told Tursunov to get angry. When exhausted Dima said “I don’t know how,” Tarpischev’s response was: “Imagine, Volkov (another Russian coach) stole your girlfriend.”
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