This Morning's Top Story - July 23, 2008

In an absolutely stunning development I have learned that two ATP (that would be Association of Tennis Professionals to those unaware - the men's professional tour) tennis players have recently been suspended by, err, the ATP for betting on tennis matches. You can read about it here if you would like.

You may be asking yourself at this point, what's so stunning about this, given that the article itself mentions recent allegations of potential match fixing by tour player Nikolay Davydenko. True, the fact that tennis players were gambling on the match isn't the stunning development of which I am speaking. What is stunning about this is that I learned of this news in the first place.

Now I will freely admit that I am a fairly big tennis fan, however, even my level of interest in the sport does not rise to the point where I would know, let alone care, what the names of the 34th and 37th ranked doubles players in the world are. These people are doubles players for crying out loud! Usually the best doubles players in the world play doubles because they are not skilled enough to win on a consistent basis playing singles. And these two guys in a combined twenty years of professional tennis play have a combined singles record of 19-29. They're obviously not that great at playing singles, but they're ranked 34th and 37th in the world playing doubles. So I would say that they aren't exceptionally good at doubles either.

So in essence what is stunning about this story is that Associated Press evidently had someone to spare to write about it. How is it newsworthy that the 34th and 37th ranked doubles players in the world are betting on tennis matches that do not involve themselves?

And of course, you naturally should be asking why I even care about this or even bothered to open the link. Well, I will simply answer this (very good) enquiry by saying that recently I have heard a number of complaints (or better yet whines) by people because I have not been updating this weblog enough. Well, here you go.

Non-Rigged Flip Cup 2008

I would like to offer my congratulations to the winners of this year's 2nd Annual Houston Flip-Cup Tournament, also potentially to be known as the 1st Annual Non-Rigged Houston Flip-Cup Tournament. (We of course won't know if the non-rigging of the tournament is annual until another tournament is held next year that is also not rigged, unlike what occurred last year.)

Being clear underdogs heading into the finals, the purple team consisting of a bunch of people who I'm not going to waste my time naming battled valiantly to defeat the heavily favored orange team. (I would name the orange team's players, but this also would be a waste of my time.) The match came down to round five of this best of five rounds match. Team orange was ahead early and led heading into the final leg of the round, but some faulty cup placement during the flipping portion of the contest doomed team orange as the team purple anchor, who for some unfathomable reason decided to fly to Houston, TX, for the sole reason of competing in a flip cup tournament that pure percentages should have told her was likely to be rigged, came up with a clutch chug and perfect flip to secure the upset.

Bravo Team Purple!

Also, James was totally owned by Hebing when they faced off during the tournament.