Grab a copy of the Sports Illustrated 2009 swimsuit issue this week because Daniela Hantuchova, Maria Kirilenko and Tatiana Golovin are the latest tennis babes who posed for the magazine.
The three players spent five days on a secluded beach of Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic for their photo shoot, which was photographed by Walter Iooss Jr.
Here are some of my favourites.
Daniela Hantuchova
Maria Kirilenko
Tatiana Golovin
(Via sportsillustrated.cnn.com)
Finally I'm back in the blogosphere after disappearing for few days.
Let's start off with the Davis Cup match between Taiwan and Kazakhstan.
During the week when the absence of Taiwan's top player Rendy Lu Yen-Hsun and Kazakhstan's three top-200 Russian imports threatened to grab the headlines of their Asia/Oceania Zone Group I Davis Cup tie, unheralded Chen Ti had the last laugh.
Chen defeated world no. 180 Yuri Schukin 4-6, 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (3), 6-1 to give Taiwan a 3-1 lead in a 4-1 victory over the visitors.
In that crucial 4th rubber, credit has to be given to the Taiwan cheering team who cheered Chen and his teammates to success.
Elvis took the picture of John Lee in his famous wig.
Hey, Esther, thank you for the translation too :-)
It's time for tennis blogger to recognise the cheering team leader his effort!
Q1. How does it feel as the leader of the cheering team?JOHN LEE: I am proud to be the leader, and fans were part of the team members besides the players. In example, the cheering group played an important role during the double's match and Chen Ti's 4th rubber. That was a crucial moment and the support had given the players spirit to fight hard.
Q2. What motivates you to form a cheering team?
JOHN LEE: I used to be a member of The Fanatics cheering group which is based in Australia. My participation in the Fanatics cheering team had inspired me to form my very own Taiwan cheering team. It feels great when a group of people gather together to support the sportsmen. So, I formed a group called "Taiwan Woo".
John Lee in his Bruce Lee uniform holding cutie pie baby Savi.
JOHN LEE: I didn't choose blue or green because there have political meaning in Taiwan. So, I think yellow is a brighter colour and suitable for my team and the most important is, it is a political-free colour.
About Bruce Lee, that was a coincidence image that I brought into my team, i didn't have the intention to use Bruce Lee as our trademark. I bought the yellow attire from Japan and I had wore it at one of the Davis Cup event in Taiwan. My friend told me, I was like Bruce Lee and the image does suit Taiwan Woo. That's why I wear the attire until now.
You can visit John Lee's blog at http://kunlinjohnlee.pixnet.net/blog
By the way, Taiwan will host India on March 6-8. I think most of us will expect a stiff competition between these two countries.
(Images by Elvis Dai and via John Lee's blog)
I wanted to write this post a couple of days ago but needed more time to dig info.
If you don't read local paper The News Straits Times, probably you've missed a couple of articles about bringing a WTA women's tennis event to Kuala Lumpur.
The first article was published in September but I first read about it in tennisforum.com.
The initial plan was this: a makeshift tennis stadium to be erected at the Twin Towers' open car park specially for the event.
Very ambitious indeed! And I was super excited!
Now this event was said to be a US$400,000 event and expected to play in the second half of the year 2009.
Okay, that was the first article.
Then there was this second article three months later in December 2008 saying that the Malaysian Open will be held on Feb 23 to March 1.
And this time the venue was: a makeshift tennis stadium to be erected at the Bukit Kiara Equestrian Club (BKEC) in Hartamas!
The article said the organiser was trying to raise the total prize money from USS225,000 to US$400,000 to attract top names for the hard court tournament. Some of the names mentioned including Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic!
Now the event is cancelled.
There are no proper explanation or statement from the organiser or LTAM to the media. Probably because this event is still considered to be in a planning stage and it's not a responsibility to explain what had happened or gone wrong.
From what my source told me, the organiser here is Carbon Group, who has the reputation of managing events like A1GP Malaysia and other motor sports and golf events.
I don't really mind their lack of experience in managing tennis events because you can always engage with the experts from overseas particularly from our neighbouring countries who organise WTA or ATP events every year.
Besides Malaysia has organised tennis exhibitions twice that featured tennis players like Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer as well as legends like Pete Sampras and Bjorn Borg. Although the tennis exhos were organised by different company, you have seen how they worked, roped in sponsors and made it happened.
And not forgetting, Malaysia has organised WTA tournaments back in 1999 and 2000 before it was moved to Bali.
Now what surprises me is that the article stated this: "The local organiser managed to outbid 16 other countries for the WTA Tour event about a month (in November?) ago."
How can you outbid other countries when you know you don't even have enough of the money?
Did the organiser realise the consequences of doing this?
And do they ever think they can organise a huge event like this in just 2-3 months?
And why not make the National Tennis Centre the main venue? This place has been used for ITF Futures and Challenger events! I believe earlier booking and renovation to upgrade the place would be sufficient to turn this place into an international tennis tournament venue.
Supposed 2 weeks from now tennis fans would be able to watch a women's tennis event in Malaysia. And looking at Jelena's schedule, she's free during that Feb 23-March 1 week. She could have travelled here!
Now I wonder if there's any chance for other local organisers to bid for a WTA event like this in the future because of the failure of Carbon Group to put up the show here.
