United States Open Tennis Tournament

The grunt and groan begins today. This is U.S. Open tennis time. There are four majors on the tour each year. Each is called a Grand Slam. The players live for them and refer to them merely as "Slams." The people who run them, tennis federations in Australia, France, England and the United States, quietly refer to them with sounds resembling the ringing of cash registers. Australia is the hang-loose friendly major. The French is delightful on clay and delectable in cuisine.

For many years, Andre Agassi stole the show at the U.S. Open. Now, three years out of the tennis game, he's doing it in coat and tie. Monday was opening day. They played 56 matches. Defending champions Roger Federer and Serena Williams won handily. There was drama on the back courts, great play on the grandstand, exceptional effort everywhere. And then, Monday night, the bald guy from Las Vegas walked to the microphone and one-upped everything. He was there as part of a ceremony honoring "athletes who have given back."

Rafael Nadal would be the first to say he's coming back from sore knees and it's no big thing. Richard Gasquet would be the first to say he's coming back from a raw deal and it's a huge thing. The two young tennis stars played a first-round match on center court at the U.S. Open on Wednesday. Nadal won, as expected. Gasquet showed flashes of brilliance in the 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 defeat, as expected. But this was much more than your routine match. This one had connections, multiple story lines and an off-court soap opera.

Maria Sharapova will sit out the U.S. Open because of a bad right shoulder, the first major championship she'll skip since her Grand Slam debut in 2003. The three-time Grand Slam title winner already had announced she was pulling out of the Beijing Olympics because of the injury. The No. 3-ranked Sharapova said in a posting on her website Friday that she probably won't need surgery and could be ready to play in two to three months. "It hurts me so much to miss the Olympics and the U.S.

The U.S. Tennis Assn. said Monday it essentially has taken its key summer tournaments in Carson and New Haven, Conn., off the table for now by not applying for slots on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour for 2009, a decision that raises questions about the future of those events. The USTA owns the New Haven tournament, and holds 25% of the event in Carson, which is held at the Home Depot Center. The Anschutz Entertainment Group owns the other 75%. Both hard-court events are part of the U.S.

NEW YORK -- Benjamin Becker's identity crisis continues. He is a tennis player from Germany who is not the Becker tennis fans think of. Nor is he related to Boris. He is the player who won the most celebrated match of last year's U.S. Open and who is remembered mostly as the other guy across the net from Andre Agassi. And now, as the player to deal Agassi the last loss of his legendary career, he struggles with his own worthiness.

NEW YORK -- Nineteen barrier breakers, two charismatic tennis stars and one legendary pioneer. It is shaping up to be a special, and fitting, tribute at the U.S. Open tonight to Althea Gibson, who 50 years ago became the first African American to win the U.S. national championship. Not only are reigning Wimbledon champion Venus Williams and her younger sister Serena, winner of the Australian Open this year, scheduled to play in back-to-back night matches to honor the anniversary, the U.S.

NEW YORK -- So much for the wrist, the knee and the thumb. So much for the lack of serious match play leading into the U.S. Open. It was all so much about Venus Williams and her sister Serena on the first night of the final Slam of the season. Monday night started as a tribute to Althea Gibson, and her historic victory 50 years ago at the U.S. national championships, and ended as a celebration of the sisters.

NEW YORK -- Nikolay Davydenko has played in Montreal, Cincinnati and New Haven, Conn., since one of his matches caused a British Internet gambling firm, Betfair, to void all bets. He's now competing in the U.S. Open. Then he will go to the China Open. Only after all that will Davydenko be interviewed by investigators, more than five weeks after his second-round match against Martin Vassallo Arguello in Sopot, Poland, on Aug. 2, which prompted the gambling probe.

NEW YORK -- It was 2 hours 23 minutes into a U.S. Open tennis match here Wednesday afternoon when the eruption should have occurred. Marat Safin, the Mt. Vesuvius of the men's tour, had a match point and was about to hit a backhand. Out of nowhere came this screeching, grinding sound. Either a plane had mistaken the Louis Armstrong Court for a runway at La Guardia or somebody had turned the volume all the way up on the court-side woofers and tweeters.