The reason I didn't take the baseball route is because they don't have rankings for baseball players.

Without a doubt, there's huge satisfaction when a relatively smaller nation can take on a bigger nation and defeat them. There's a lot of pride in that.

It's hard for anyone in the 24-hour news cycles that we all live in now to follow something that the first round is played in March and the final finishes in December. I understand the challenges there.

I'm not suggesting that the entire nation can't be successful, but there's something to it when you have 150 cable channels and the Internet at your fingertips and video games and all kinds of ADD-addled devices like my iPhone and your BlackBerry and things that keep us busy.

What I've seen historically is winning is a major aloe. It solves a lot of problems.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that most champions are born into certain environments and encouraged early. Then, later on, they might get some assistance from their federations.

You'd have to think that if he'd been around today, Rod Laver would have been Rod Laver.