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	exploring the world of tennis . . .

New Year's resolution - drink beer and lose weight! According to all the science books, you expend energy no matter what you're doing. Even when you breathe, you burn calories. Your body expends energy while it attends to basic functions like blood circulation, raising and lowering your body temperature and so on. It's great news. My New Year's resolution is to drink plenty of ice cold beer. Just imagine how many calories must be expended as your body warms the beer up to reach your internal temperature. I fully expect to shed pounds. Tennis authorities come up with smashing idea In a watershed moment in the history of the sport, the ITF, the ATP and WTA Tours have bowed to player pressure and will experiment with a new racket-bashing initiative whereby a cracked racket will no longer result in a code violation. Players will be allowed to wreck two rackets per set. During a tie-break game in any set, each player will be permitted one additional destructive episode. "I think it will add more personality to the game, having the passion visible to the fans and to the media," said Russia's Marat Safin. "I think it will be interesting to see which players can produce the most mangled frames." However, not everyone is convinced it will enhance the sport's entertainment value. Kim Clijsters, for example, believes players should develop the ability to cope with adversity without resorting to petulant outbursts. "I'm absolutely against this," she said. "Part of being a tennis player is being able to solve things calmly. Besides, racket smashing is not cheap. Well, it is cheap actually. But you know what I mean. It costs money." The new procedure will be adopted for the first time at this year's Masters Tennis at the Royal Albert Hall. John McEnroe will fittingly become one of the first beneficiaries. "I'm thrilled about it because tennis needs it for a variety of reasons," he enthused. "It's great for the viewing public and frankly we just don't need more repetitions of what we've seen over the years with people getting defaulted from tournaments." Three chords and the truth England's cricket captain Andrew Flintoff credited country singer Johnny Cash with inspiring his team's memorable victory over India recently. England needed to beat India in the final Test match in Mumbai to share the series and retain second place in the world rankings. At lunchtime on the final day, a draw looked the most likely outcome until the sound of Cash's "Ring of Fire" blasted out of the speakers in the England dressing room and transformed the mood of the team. It's generally well-known that Scotland's Andy Murray prepares for the demands of a competitive match by listening to the music of 50 Cent and the Black Eyed Peas and I can't help speculating how much influence music might have on the fortunes of other tennis players. For example, Roger Federer should clearly listen to Joni Mitchell's "I Won't Cry" before Grand Slam presentation ceremonies and Venus Williams should seek out "You Know The Score" by the Hollies before she plays Karolina Sprem at Wimbledon again. I wonder if Justine Henin-Hardenne heard Willie Nelson's "Reasons To Quit" before going on court for the 2006 Australian Open final. And when Tim Henman led Goran Ivanisevic 5-7 7-6 6-0 2-1 in the 2001 Wimbledon semi-final, perhaps, just perhaps, he heard a few faint strains of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" wafting through the air. One step forward? Greg Rusedski is having a frustrating time of it these days. The big-serving lefty, who was born in Canada but adopted British citizenship in 1995, has been striving to end Tim Henman's seven-year reign as British number one for, well, seven years. Striving so hard, in fact, that he entered a Challenger event in the Ukraine at the tail-end of last year specifically with that objective in mind, only to lose in the first round. Many players, Henman and Murray included, do not rate their national ranking too high on their list of priorities, but it really matters to Rusedski. What bitter irony then that the very week he finally manages to edge ahead of Henman, he gets leapfrogged by Andy Murray. C'est la vie. Amazing defeat Marcos Baghdatis was really impressed with his defeat at the hands of Roger Federer in the Australian Open final. "It's been two great weeks," he said. "I'm in the final, I played the final, I lost, it's just amazing." Like most people, I expect Federer loves a good loser, especially when he's on the other side of the net. Even so, I'll bet he considers the 20-year-old a serious threat and I don't imagine there'll be too many complaints from the Swiss camp if the Cypriot Army drafts Baghdatis before the French Open. Simplistic statistic 100 percent of chances not taken fail to succeed.

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