Super Bowl XLVI
Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
DeMarco: Plug in a well-heeled ownership group and negotiate one of those mega-bucks TV deals that are going around, and the Dodgers could become the west coast version of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.
Pavel Datsyuk and Todd Bertuzzi scored shootout goals to give Detroit a 2-1 win over Anaheim on Friday. The victory was the Red Wings' 19th consecutive at home, one shy of the NHL record.
Jeremy Lin had the most astounding performance of his remarkable week, scoring a career-high 38 points and outdueling Kobe Bryant as the New York Knicks held off the Los Angeles Lakers 92-85 on Friday night.
Arc's weekend preview: The way you beat Kentucky is by getting physical with their big guys, and the Wildcats don’t have much depth up front.
CFT: Jordan Jefferson makes it clear he wasn't happy with LSU's game plan in the Tigers' BCS Championship Game loss to Alabama.
Despite an injury scare and a few missed opportunities at Monterey Peninsula CC, Tiger Woods remains in contention at the AT&T.
John Isner jolted Roger Federer with his big serve and booming groundstrokes Friday, winning 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-2 to give the United States a 2-0 lead against Switzerland in the first round of the Davis Cup.
Manchester City will find at least three highly motivated players in its way Sunday when it tries to improve upon its flagging away form in the Premier League at Aston Villa.
All that stuff about the Olympic ideal, how it's all about taking part, not winning, can often seem like so much hot air, rendered hopelessly quaint and outdated by the ultra-competitive and mercenary world of modern sport. Until, that is, you speak to Kieran Behan.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
AP
NEW YORK - Roger Federer is one cool customer.
The temperature climbed into the 90s yet again Thursday at Flushing Meadows, and the guy showed up for work wearing a warmup jacket. Then he put in his 1 hour, 41 minutes on court, dismissing 104th-ranked Andreas Beck of Germany 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 with the help of 15 aces, to ease into the third round of the U.S. Open.
"It's about just saving your energy for the really big match coming up, maybe the next one," Federer said, perhaps mindful that he was pushed to five sets in the opening round at Wimbledon in June before eventually losing in the quarterfinals at a second consecutive major tournament.
He dropped all of seven games in the first round of the U.S. Open, and the owner of a record 16 Grand Slam titles is feeling pretty good about things at the moment.
"It's the perfect start, sure. I played Monday; had two days off. I had another easy one physically today, and here I am in the third round feeling like I'm completely in the tournament," said Federer, a five-time U.S. Open champion and the only man left in the field who has won it.
"I got a sense for how the court speed is again. I got the sense of the crowd and the wind now, as well. I played one night, one day," he continued. "I have all the answers after two matches."
In other words: Let everyone else sweat it out.
Like Kei Nishikori, the 147th-ranked qualifier from Japan, who fought cramps in his racket-holding right hand and elsewhere while taking a minute shy of five hours to wrap up a 5-7, 7-6 (6), 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-1 victory over 11th-seeded Marin Cilic.
"It was very humid. It wasn't easy to get the oxygen," said Cilic, a U.S. Open quarterfinalist last year, and an Australian Open semifinalist in January.
The 20-year-old Nishikori began feeling his muscles tighten in the second set but didn't really begin worrying until after trailing 2-1 in sets.
"I was thinking about it in fourth set, mostly: 'Even if I win this, I have to play one more set. It's not going to be easy for me, you know, cramping,'" said Nishikori, who reached the fourth round two years ago, the first Japanese man since 1937 to get that far at the U.S. Open. "But I was able to fight through."
2008 Australian Open winner Novak Djokovic's 7-5, 6-3, 7-6 (6) victory over 52nd-ranked Philipp Petzschner of Germany was interrupted briefly in the eighth game while police escorted out three spectators after a fight in the upper deck.
Djokovic made it to at least the semifinals in New York each of the past three years — and lost to Federer each time.
Among those winning in the afternoon were Richard Gasquet, a former top-10 player who eliminated No. 6-seeded Nikolay Davydenko 6-3, 6-4, 6-2; Robin Soderling, a two-time French Open runner-up who beat American Taylor Dent 6-2, 6-2, 6-4; and South Africa's Kevin Anderson, who outlasted No. 26 Thomaz Bellucci 6-7 (4), 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 (2).
Americans Mardy Fish and James Blake won, as did No. 13 Jurgen Melzer, No. 21 Albert Montanes, and No. 22 Juan Carlos Ferrero. Blake, a wild-card entry, will take on No. 3 Djokovic in the third round.
The No. 5-seeded Soderling's next opponent will be 48th-ranked Thiemo de Bakker, who advanced Thursday when Ivan Dodig quit in the fourth set because of cramping.
Soderling-Dent was in the third set during Federer's postmatch news conference. And Federer — whose loss to Soderling in the French Open quarterfinals this year ended a record streak of 23 consecutive Grand Slam semifinal appearances — kept glancing at the flat-screen TV on the wall to his right, surely aware that he could meet the Swede again in that round next week.
Federer has won 42 of his past 43 matches at Flushing Meadows, the only loss coming in last year's final to Juan Martin del Potro, who didn't defend his title after wrist surgery. With Andy Roddick's exit in the second round Wednesday night, and Lleyton Hewitt's departure in the first, Federer is the only previous winner of the U.S. Open left in the men's field.
"It's definitely an advantage, I would think, because (of) the conditions here," Federer said. "You could be unlucky and get hit with a really hot day or a very windy day, and not even in your control, sometimes, you lose a match here. That's where it's important, like today, to get through easily, instead of maybe going (through a) five-hour match."
Tell that to Nishikori.
John Isner jolted Roger Federer with his big serve and booming groundstrokes Friday, winning 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-2 to give the United States a 2-0 lead against Switzerland in the first round of the Davis Cup.
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The Week in Sports Pictures The Giants on top of the football world, getting ready for the London Olympics and more. more photos |
Jeremy Lin had the most astounding performance of his remarkable week, scoring a career-high 38 points and outdueling Kobe Bryant as the New York Knicks held off the Los Angeles Lakers 92-85 on Friday night.
Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
