ATP players try to raise their weak voices

Continued

Cynthia Lum/WireImage.com

Kim Clijsters repeats her Fed Cup no-show pattern.

That's the power that they do have … which is not show up where they don't want to play. Just imagine how happy Shanghai is going to be if most of the top competitors don't go. Guess who's going to get an earful and a request for a major refund - de Villiers.

According to the Daily Telegraph's excellent Mark Hodgkinson, de Villiers told Federer, Ljubicic et al that's he's willing to be flexible and maybe, just maybe, they will reconsider letting Monte Carlo keeps its status. But Hamburg still appears to be in real trouble.

Here's what I really don't understand: Why attempt to re-mandate Masters Series tournaments when the star players have historically shown that they don't care about the zero-pointers or the massive fines anyway? The more reasonable request would be to ask them to compete in seven of nine Masters Series and set those schedules at the beginning of the year. Then the Americans can skip two clay courts, and the Europeans and South Americans can skip two hard courts. The tournaments will have to deal with that because reality dictates that if the tour attempts to hard-designate too many events, the players will pull out anyway. It's not worth keeping up the illusion.

NADAL ROLLS IN MONTE CARLO
Titleholder Rafael Nadal continued his excellent play and Federer picked up steam on Thursday. Nadal extended his record winning streak on clay to 65 matches by beating up German Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-2, 6-3, who defeated Guillermo Garcia Lopez 5-7, 7-6(4), 7-6(4). Federer took down Spaniard David Ferrer 6-4, 6-0 in 64 minutes and will go up against David Ferrer, who knocked out sixth-seeded Serb Novak Djokovic 7-5, 6-4. Guess we'll have to wait a while until The Djoker gets a crack at Fed again. Juan Carlos Ferrero overcame Richard Gasquet, who upended Ljubicic 6-3, 6-7, 7-5 in a marathon. Tomas Berdych scored an impressive clay court win with a 5-7, 6-3, 6-0 score over red hot Swede Robin Soderling, who had grabbed a 7-6(5), 6-2 victory over Max Mirnyi.

Our major Fed Cup preview will arrive late Friday, but do you mind if we lament what could have been a great tie between the US and Belgium and now will be a slaughter, as there's no way in creation that Kirsten Flipkens and Caroline Maes have any chance against the Williams sisters? This is not the first time that we've complained about many of the top players lack of commitment to Fed Cup, but with the Williamses, Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters, that's four of the best women's players over the past seven years. With Clijsters retiring at year's end, they will have never faced each other wearing their counties colors during their primes. This is the fourth occasion in the past five years they've had a chance to raise the profile of women's tennis and it never came to pass. On those four occasions, Clijsters has played once (but the Williamses didn't show) and Venus has played once (but Henin and Clijsters didn't show). Venus will clock in her second 2007 occasion this coming weekend. Serena will play her first tie against Belgium. Henin hasn't faced the US since 2000, when Lindsay Davenport and Monica Seles gave her and Clijsters a lesson in Las Vegas. I can't think of a bigger missed opportunity in women's tennis over the past decade. It's really sad.

Click here to watch live Masters Series tennis from Monte Carlo.

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