Forty Deuce

Yay! I Got To Write About Petko!

You can read it here.  Click lots.

(Pic: Getty)

Um...I Wrote Some Things. You Are Welcome to Read Them.

I suck at self-promotion.  It grosses me out and kinda makes me nauseaus.  In my previous life I used to be one of the "too cool for school" kids at the bar, snarking on all the douchebags and ass-kissers as they worked the room and bragged about their non-existent lawyer skillz.  I, the drunk awesome kid in the corner, subscribed to the "Look.  If I just focus on my thing and I'm good at what I do then I don't need to self-promote.  My awesomeness will be self-evident.  Self-promotion is for people who have to blow smoke up their own ass because no one will do it for them.  Fuck that."  Well guess what.  Those smoke blowers are still lawyers and I am an unemployed tennis blogger.  By choice, but still.

Where was I going with this?  Oh right.  I hate talking about myself.  But I feel like I owe it to the people who took a chance on me to make sure they are rewarded for their risky venture of asking a podunk blogger to write for their ridiculously large publication.  So here goes.

Um...I wrote a couple of pieces for USA Today on the effect of the lengthy tennis season on fans and FD buddy Bobby Chintapalli also wrote a story on the WTA off-season (and bless whoever chose those first two pictures for Bobby's piece).*  This one is in print and online, and this one is online only. 

If you're in the Bay Area, good luck trying to track down a print copy.  It is 10:50 pm and my parents have set their alarms for 5am to hit every newstand, bookstore, and hotel for every Friday edition they can get their tiny little hands on.  I assure you they will find every single one of them.

But if you see a copy of USA Today during an interlude to your snowy Friday, please feel free to pick it up.  I mean, pay for it first.  I'm not telling you guys to shoplift USA Today.  Let's be clear about that.  I don't want to get any weird 4 a.m. calls asking me to bail you out of any "predicaments".

Now, if you can't get a copy, that's ok.  I ain't mad at ya.  Nothing is stopping you from sitting at your desk and clicking those three links over and over and over and over and over and over and over and o--ok, you get the picture.  I just think that it was really cool of USAT to me this opportunity and it seems that, based on the Twitter response, you guys are jazzed about it, too.  I fully concede that pretty much everyone else in the tennis writing/blogging/journoing world is a far superior "tennishead" than me (does a day go by that I don't eff-up some stat here or there or make a patently absurd prediction based on "Hot or Not?") and God bless them for it.  But hopefully I can still string along some words that tickle your funny bone and allow us all to share a maniacal giggle about this awesome sport that we all love so dearly to the point of idiocy. 

I mean, did you see how much we all spazzed out about Dinara getting back onto Twitter?  Our fandom is retarded.

I don't know where I'm going with this and now I'm rambling which is exactly what happens whenever I get nervous and anxious and I'm totally nervous and anxious about plugging these things so I'm gonna keep rambling, oh no, I should stop.

So there.  I did it. 

Woo.

And many thanks to Joe Fleming, the golf and tennis editor at USAT, for shepherding me through the process.  You should all thank him by following him on Twitter (@USATgolftennis).

*Quick aside: I think it's really cool that two minority women were published in a major publication writing about men's and women's tennis.  Ok, I didn't *really* write about men's tennis.  But I mentioned Rafa.  that counts, right?  RIght.  Girl power.  Suck on that, espnW.