'Rog' - What a legend!

Watched a bit of the tennis at the Australian Open over the course of the last few weeks. Roger Federer (or 'Rog' as Jim Courier seems to refer to him from the commentary box) has looked his usual awesome self. Now at 10 grand slam wins & nearing Jimmy Connor's record for the most consecutive weeks at No. 1 in the rankings, Roger will surely go down as one of the game's greats. He powered past Roddick (who had been looking good in the previous rounds) with ease, and only really looked troubled once in the whole tournament - when Gonzalez had 3 set points to take the 1st set (would have been the first that 'Rog' had dropped in the whole tournament). Federer defended the 3 set points and then took the 1st set in a tie-break before easily winning the next 2 (in fact he was hardly perspiring at the end of the game). And his dad (sporting a superb 'tasche) seemed to be pretty bored by the whole affair. In this form he will surely pass Pete Sampras' record of 18 Grand Slam wins...injury permitting of course.

More surprising was Serena Williams' win in the ladies singles. From 81st in world to no.14 in two weeks is impressive, more so when she has to be the heaviest player in women's tennis - she just looked so unfit & was lucky to come through her 1st round game. Mind you she is strong and her 'guns' are probably bigger than mine! Will be interesting to see if she bothers to get into shape for the rest of the season.

This tournament also say the introduction of 'hawkeye' technology and there was certainly a few teething problems with the system....however I think it is worth persevering with and the 'challenge system' is something worth looking at in other sports such as cricket.

Finally - started to wonder where the weird scoring system comes from in tennis.
Turns out love is a corruption of the French for egg - l'oeuf - as an egg is shaped like a zero....obvious right?
Deuce comes from a corruption of the French - Deux - meaning that two points are needed to win.
And the 15, 30 , 40 has two suggestions - one that originally clocks were used to keep score (15, 30 & 45) whilst the alternative is that it originates in the scoring system of Royal Tennis (both agree that 40 is merely a shortening of 45 to 2 syllables). Interesting eh?