Unlike Tiger, Nadal had legit excuse

^

No coffee for Rafael Nadal or Tiger Woods.

Coffee is for closers!

At least my nephew Rafa had an excuse. The best tennis player on the planet, Novak Djokovic, was running him ragged in a 6-hour marathon that featured hundreds of amazing shots by both players. There was no shame at all in losing one of the best grand slam finals ever.

Tiger? The guy who built a reputation as the best closer since Michael Jordan gagged away the final round in Abu Dhabi and lost to some dude named Robert Rock. And I don't think it was because Rock is the best golfer on the planet.

Every time Eldrick has a good round or two, ESPNers and other fawning media types can't wait to declare, "Tiger's back!" By Tiger's own definition, however, the only tournaments that really matter are the majors ... so we shouldn't believe he's back until he wins one of those.

Given that he hasn't won a full-field tournament of any kind since well before Djokovic became the best tennis player on the planet, we might be waiting quite a while.

^

Nadel, Nadal, whatever ... it's all in the family!

^
All those hours I spent teaching my nephew how to play tennis -- not to mention, how to grow hair -- are paying off big time.

Another major for Rafael Nadel!

("Nadal," as everybody knows, is merely the Spanish translation.)

Has there ever been a better clay-court player or a better defensive master? Freakishly athletic and ridiculously talented, Rafa was unbeatable again at Roland Garros. So the better question might be: Has there ever been a better tennis player ... period?

I thoroughly enjoy listening to John McEnroe analyze tennis. There are few better commentators in any sport. It's especially rare to hear one so accomplished as an athlete articulate the nuances of his sport in plain English for the masses to comprehend.

Yet it was the almost-as-good Mary Carillo who made the single best point as Rafa was steamrolling Roger Federer in Sunday's French Open final:

Yes, Federer has won a record 16 majors to 10 by Nadel/Nadal. But Roger is almost 5 years older than Rafa, meaning the gap likely will close quickly. More significantly, Rafa is 17-8 against Roger in majors. So how can Federer be the greatest player ever, as many observers claim, if he hasn't even been able to win half of his big-tournament matches against his generation's other great player?

I like to think of it this way: While Roger didn't have to contend with a mature Rafa to build his record, Rafa had to go through perhaps the greatest player ever -- when said player was in his prime -- to succeed on a major scale.

And Rafa has done just that. Over and over and over again.

Makes me proud to be a fellow Nadel/Nadal!
^

What would J.C. do? Throw 4 picks!

^

The Bald Truth

Believe me, I'd be saying this even if Bears Savior J.C. had thrown four TD passes to beat the Packers by 20:

It's too early to judge Jay Cutler.

Yes, Bears Savior J.C. threw four interceptions, would have thrown four more if Green Bay DBs weren't wearing oven mitts, couldn't rally his new team to victory at the end and spent most of the game looking as if he hadn't taken part in a single preseason practice.

Yes, he contributed to the Bears having to waste all three second-half timeouts.

Yes, he was bad. Not quite Jonathan Quinn bad, but certainly Cade McNown bad.

BUT IT'S ONLY ONE FREAKIN' GAME!

It was J.C.'s first game with a new team, new coaches and new receivers. Not to mention new expectations that are stupidly high.

If he's still playing like this in October, though ... well, do the Bears still have Moses Moreno on speed-dial?

The Quote I

"How funny is it that you see Kyle Orton in Denver chillin' right now at 1-0?" - Rodney Harrison, NBC studio analyst.

Indeed, K.O. leads J.C., 1 miracle to none.

The List

Ten observations from the Bears-Packers game:

1. Just a few minutes after he was called for a phantom penalty that kept Chicago's go-ahead drive alive, Al Harris picked off Bears Savior J.C. to launch Green Bay's all-the-cheese-you-can-eat celebration. This is what's called poetic justice.

2. Give Bears Savior J.C. credit for his sticktoitiveness. Two times he tried to throw passes right to Tramon Williams. Two times the Packers' DB dropped passes that hit him in his hands. But doggone it if J.C. didn't finally hit Williams in stride late in the first half.

3. How nice of Adewale Ogunleye to emerge from his two-year hibernation now that he's in a contract season.

4. I'm a big fan of NBC's Cris Collinsworth ... but if he pointed out one more time that the Packers looked much sharper in preseason than they did Sunday, I was going to climb aboard Air Nadel, fly to Green Bay and go all Serena Williams on him. The preseason means zilch because opposing defenses show nothing, and Collinsworth is smart enough to know it. C'mon, dude!

5. Remember Nate Vasher?

6. How wild that Bears long snapper Patrick Mannelly thought he was Peyton Manning and called an audible, with the bungled fake punt handing the Packers a gift field goal. How crazy that the Bears give their long snapper such autonomy. And how desperate of Lovie Smith to give away a precious time-out by challenging the number of players the Packers had on the field. I mean, if the Bears wanted to go 0-for-3, they would have acquired Milton Bradley, not Jay Cutler.

7. Whether he's overrated, underrated or just plain rated, Brian Urlacher is important to the Bears, and if his dislocated wrist isn't located real soon, they have little chance of contending in a very tough division. Hunter Hillenmeyer? What, it isn't incredible enough that 3/11ths of the Bears' starting offense played at Vanderbilt?

8. Packers QB Aaron Rodgers wasn't very good, either, but he came through when it counted and didn't throw any interceptions. That he twice missed long TD passes to receivers who had beaten Bears DBs by several yards should make any honest Bears fan plenty worried about the D.

9. On the decisive snap - Rodgers' winning 50-yard heave to wide-open Greg Jennings on a third-and-1 play-action pass with 1:11 to go - Lovie's defense was bamboozled by Mike McCarthy's offense. And now that he's calling the defensive plays, Lovie has no scapegoat except himself.

10. If Collinsworth, a former star receiver, was right about inept Chicago wideouts costing Cutler dearly because they couldn't make proper adjustments on the fly, then GM Jerry Angelo was wrong about Bears Savior J.C. being able to turn a chickenspit receiving corps into chicken salad.

The Quote II

"It was a tough night for Jay. And when you're gonna be the franchise quarterback, how do you respond in tough situations? First play interception in the two-minute drill. That's not what Chicago gave up two number-one draft choices for." - Tony Dungy, NBC studio analyst.

Welcome to The Bears Savior J.C. Bandwagon, folks. Easy-on, easy-off.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

When calling for a fake punt on fourth-and-11 from your own 26 in the fourth quarter of a two-point game on the road, Mannelly can't just think the opponent has too many men on the field. He must be absolutely, positively, 100 percent certain.

See, NFL teams don't hire long snappers because they're deep thinkers.

Of course, if the play had worked, Mannelly would have been Snappy McGenius to all the fanatics who reside in Bear Country.

But it didn't. So he isn't.

Serena's effin' bedtime tales

^

Just a quick bedtime story, kids.

Once upon a time, there was a great tennis player named Serena. She didn't like a call that the line judge made in her U.S. Open semifinal match against another great player named Kim, so Serena huffed and she puffed and she screamed:

"If I could, I would take this (effin') ball and shove it down your (effin') throat ... "

Serena then was penalized a point, which ended the match.

And Kim lived happily ever after.

The End.

Not that there's anything wrong with that

^

The Bald Truth

Pretty much everybody except Greg Louganis and Billie Jean King has gone ballistic ever since Hawaii football coach Greg McMackin used a disparaging term for "gay" to describe a goofy dance-and-chant number that Notre Dame players performed before last year's Hawaii Bowl.

The university suspended McMackin for 30 days.

The Western Athletic Conference reprimanded him.

Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said he was personally offended by McMackin's remark.

And Jay Mariotti immediately called for the White Sox to fire Ozzie Guillen.

The Balder Truth

I'm trying to decide which is more incredible:

That Randy Wells is the Cubs' best pitcher.

Or that it isn't even particularly close.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Interesting responses to the poll question: "Are you for or against Michelle Wie being chosen for the U.S. Solheim Cup team?"

++ 5 percent: "For."

++ 4 percent: "Against."

++ 91 percent: "What's the Solheim Cup?"

Very human Tiger gets weekend off

^

The Bald Truth

I love watching any golf tournament in which the scores are close in the final nine holes and Tiger Woods is a legitimate contender.

That being said, I also think it's a good thing the very few times Tiger misses the cut, as he did at the British Open.

Yes, I know it costs the network viewers and, by extension, money. And I know it automatically makes Sunday at least a little less interesting.

But I'm a big fan of anything that works against the deification of any human being.

Woods is a great golfer. Probably the greatest ever. But he doesn't always win. Neither did Jack Nicklaus or Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali or Martina Navratilova or Wayne Gretzky or Babe Ruth.

How boring would it be if the greatest always performed greatly and always won?

It's good for the rest of us - and a wonderful lesson for us to teach our kids - that even Tiger Woods fails sometimes.

Now get out to that practice range, young man, and work on that driver!

The Balder Truth

This is Example No. 773 why you should always take The Field over Tiger Woods.

Yeah, he amazingly has won 14 of the 49 majors he's played as a professional.

Hello! That means he has not won 35 of them - 71.4 percent!

This is the biggest no-brainer out there. Yet before every major, the experts and talking heads always, always, always pick Tiger to win.

Dumb.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Frankly, it was sickening the way the TNT folks openly, desperately pulled for Tiger to make the cut. It got to the point where they were rooting against others in the field, hoping the non-Eldricks would miss shots just so the cut line would come down to Woods at +5.

I mean, nobody really expects TV types to be objective, but this was ridiculous.

And TNT won't even be televising the final two rounds!

That means it was hero worship as much as it was rooting for ratings.

Pathetic.

Bo-ring!

^

The day after the MLB All-Star Game is the worst day in sports.

No major league ballgames. 

NFL training camp hasn't opened yet.

It's offseason for the NBA and NHL (and well after the opening of free agency in those leagues, so there isn't even much news).

Wimbledon is over and The Open Championship hasn't started.

When WNBA games, Brett Favre silliness and speculation about Allen Iverson signing with the Clippers are the day's big-ticket items, well, we might as well have slept in.

The beautiful thing: The siesta is a short one. Even as I write this, Tiger & Friends are mere hours away from teeing it up over the pond. 

Baseball will be back, too, replete with folks talking about their team being only x games out "in the loss column" and y games out of the wild-card lead. (Or, in the case of the Nationals, zzzzz games out of fourth place.)

Soon enough, the All-Star festivities will be but a distant memory ... and humidity will descend upon St. Louis with enough force to curl those porn-star 'staches the Cardinals are growing.

Yes, all will be right with the world.

In the meantime ... hey, how 'bout that Chamique Holdsclaw, huh? With her putting 28 points on the board for the Dream, those lamentable Lynx never had a chance!

Tiger vs. Roger: It's a win-win proposition

^

Tiger or Roger? Well, it's kind of a trick question. 

And depending upon how it's asked, there really is no wrong answer.

By winning the French Open, Roger Federer pulled even with Eldrick Woods in the Majors Won Dept. at an incredible 14 apiece.

If you're asking which player has had the better career in his chosen occupation, it's Woods - and he likely will continue his dominance long after Roger has put his racquet in mothballs.

Such is the nature of the two games. Woods won his first major - the 1997 Masters, by a record landslide, as a 21-year-old - before anybody even knew who Federer was.  And Woods has kept winning and winning and winning.

Meanwhile, after dominating tennis for several years, Federer has been overshadowed and overwhelmed lately by my good son, Rafael Nadal ... to the point where some respected observers were wondering out loud if Roger's best days were done. 

Tiger? He's been No. 1 for so long now it's hard to remember when he wasn't. He was No. 1 as an amateur, he was No. 1 in college, he established himself as the No. 1 pro as a 21-year-old kid and he's still No. 1 as a 33-year-old father of two even after undergoing major surgery that kept him out of action for nine months. 

Sad to say, tennis pros simply don't have that luxury of longevity.

OK, but whose run of 14 majors has been more impressive? 

That's a different question - and one with a different answer.

Woods is nearly six years older than Federer. Nevertheless, if Tiger wants to keep winning well into his 40s, he surely will. Roger can have all the want-to in the world, but he simply won't be able to compete with younger players.

So Roger had neither as much time nor as much room for error to get to his 14. Roger won his 14 in a six-year span - twice as quickly as Tiger got his 14.

And then there's this: 

Tiger never hit a drive only to watch Phil Mickelson or Sergio Garcia or Ernie Els slam the ball back at him. There is no way to defend Tiger because golf is the ultimate me-against-myself game. 

There is, however, a way to defend Roger. Nadal has been doing it quite well for a couple of years now. Before that, Federer had to get the ball past Andy Roddick. Before that, Andre Agassi. 

You can make a great shot in tennis ... only to see your opponent return it for a winner anyway. Tiger has never had to worry about a great putt being kicked out of the cup by Vijay Singh.

Hell, Tiger goes ballistic if he hears the slightest camera click. Imagine how he'd react if his opponent was charging the fairway the way Pete Sampras used to charge the net.

So yes, Tiger has had (and will continue to have) a wonderful career. And yes, he deserves props-a-plenty for being the most accomplished athlete in all of sports. 

But I'm giving props for Best Major Achievement to Federer, who has had to both psych out and physically whip his opponents.

Still, when Tiger gets Major No. 15 - very likely in two weeks - I reserve the right to change my mind.

Enough booing, Wise guys

^
The Bald Truth

It's not DeWayne Wise's fault that he's DeWayne Wise.

So I sure hope that all those White Sox fans booing every time the leadoff-man-by-default made an out in Wednesday's shutout loss to the Royals were booing Sox GM Kenny Williams for not finding a better player and manager Ozzie Guillen for insisting upon batting Wise at the top of the order.

Wise is a low-average, low-on-base-percentage guy. Period. That's what he's been as he's bounced around the majors and minors (mostly the minors) for a dozen years.

If he's the best a contender can do for a leadoff hitter, maybe the contender isn't really a contender.

Hey, Cubbieland ...

Bet you didn't expect Kosuke Fukudome to be batting .444 and Milton Bradley .000, did you?

Gotta love those first-week-of-the-season stats!

The Question

How many f-bombs did Bobby Cox launch while he helplessly watched three Atlanta relievers walk four Philly batters with the bases loaded as the Braves blew a 7-run, 7th-inning lead?

The Balder Truth

Here's the headline and subhead on page 59 of this week's Sports Illustrated:

STAR ATTRACTION: At 54, Chris Evert and Greg Norman make each other feel like high school sweethearts, but can wedded bliss rejuvenate him enough to conquer Augusta National, the course that has haunted him?

Well, maybe ... if by "conquer" SI means Norman might scramble well enough to make the cut.

I mean, come on! They might as well be asking if Chrissy is rejuvenated enough to conquer Wimbledon.

The Quote

"'Just make me look really cool.' And I think she pulled it off." - Mark Teahen, Royals second baseman, on what he told a Magnificent Mile stylist before she gave him a "fauxhawk."

Yeah, I know this is where I'm supposed to post a picture of Teahen's haircut. Sorry, but they frown on using cellphone cameras in big-league clubhouses, and I don't really want to get kicked out for life.

Besides, I'm more partial to the traditional mohawk. Mostly bald, you know.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Was slumping Sox slugger Carlos Quentin really thinking about charging the mound after he got plunked by Zack Greinke? Pathetic.

Quentin practically stands on top of the plate. Then, just for emphasis, he leans over the plate, too. No wonder he was hit by pitches 20 times last season - third-most in the majors - even though he missed the last month. No wonder he led three minor leagues in the stat early in his career.

"Everybody that gets hit gets upset, especially when you’re ... not swinging the bat well," Guillen said. "Carlos is gonna get hit a lot because he stands up on top of the plate. I don’t think it was intentional."

Good point. Maybe if Quentin weren't 0-for-the-season, he wouldn't have thought about starting a fight when he got plunked Wednesday.

Grow up and face facts, dude. You lean over the plate at your own peril.

Tell you what: If he did that against Bob Gibson, he'd already be 6 feet under.