DON'T BAN THE BOMB: After John Newcombe complained that Sharapova's shriek was legalized cheating and deliberately obstructed players from hearing the ball, Alan Attwood countered, "What Newk appears to have forgotten is that...his trademark moustache represented a kind of offensive weapon and nobody tried to ban that."

DANG IT, WE NEVER FOUND ANY OF THOSE PESKY WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION; SORRY WORLD, WE MAY BURN A TAD TOO MANY FOSSIL FUELS AND IT'S BEEN QUITE A WHILE SINCE WE COULD BOAST A GRAND SLAM CHAMPION, BUT...: After Andy Murray hired Yankee Brad Gilbert as his coach, the Scot noted, "I love the way the Americans live. I love how upbeat they are and positive and sometimes a little bit in your face. But I love the way it is in America. You get up at 7 in the morning and you go downstairs for breakfast and the people are so friendly and everyone just seems happy to see you."

SO THAT'S WHERE THEM PESKY WMDs WENT: Jelena Dokic's papa Damir asserted, "Australia, with the help of Croatia and the Vatican, have brainwashed my daughter. I have thought about dropping a nuclear bomb on Sydney since Jelena lost in the first round this week, for which Australia is to blame...but I wouldn't gain anything from it." He later accused Jelena's Croatian boyfriend of kidnapping her.

DANCING ON THE EDGE OF A VOLCANO: A WILLIAMS UPDATE • Serena went to Ghana and Senegal and met top politicians, staged clinics and went to a small village where she helped a health team combat malaria. She noted, "I’ve always dreamed of coming into a village like this. Now is the time to realize that this is our generation, and we can make a statement and can fight diseases and poverty, and we can beat this." • Serena said, "I love Andre. He reminds me a lot of me. No, the other way around. He has a sense of fashion. He’s a showman. At the same time, he has a tremendous amount of class." FLORE LAROCHE/UNICEF Serena brought more cheer off-court than on. • Reflecting on Venus, Mary Carillo noted, "This woman and her sister dance on the edge of a volcano more than any other champs I’ve watched." • Navratilova contended Serena "is wasting time she cannot get back. She had the opportunity to be the greatest in history. Instead, she’ll be a supernova who burst on to the scene, and then was gone...Will she get it together, or will she fall so low she’ll need wild-card invitations? She may find by then that her head will be there, but her body won’t." • Venus Williams proclaimed, "I love the Williams sisters. Can you imagine if there weren’t Williams sisters?" • John McEnroe asserted that, "The window is closing [on the Williamses], but they could be No. 1 again with what they bring to the table athletically...There’s not anyone out there who is that far ahead of them that they couldn’t close the gap really fast." • It was an open season for open letters to Serena. First, Nick Bollettieri wrote a letter to Serena that asked: "Can you come back? A will to win and a determination to fight is no longer enough to get through a Grand Slam. I was asked to be Becker’s coach—his ranking had slipped to No. 16, and he was out of shape. I asked him what he was willing to do. He said: ‘Whatever I have to do.’ I accepted, and he got back on top. If you answer the same way...in three months, you would be ready to kick butt. What do you say?"...Then Chris Evert wrote another open letter to Serena, which stated, "Do you ever consider your place in history?...You got sidetracked with injuries, pet projects, and indifference and have won only one major in the last seven you’ve played. I find those results hard to fathom. You’re simply too good not to be winning two Grand Slam titles a year. You’re still only 24...Why not dedicate yourself entirely for the next five years and see what you can achieve?...I don’t see how acting and designing clothes can compare with the pride of being the best tennis player in the world." • Linda Robertson asked, "Will the Williamses end up just like Paris Hilton, coasting on the vapors of fame? Someday the patrons behind the velvet rope will see a Williams sidling through the club’s front door at 2 a.m. and murmur, ‘Didn’t she used to be somebody? A tennis star? Yeah, that’s what she was.’" • Venus contended, "People have to be a lot more careful about saying whether or not the Williams sisters are going to be gone, because every time they do, they come back."

HOLD ON—I'M CONFUSED. ARE YOU SUGGESTING 'STAY THE COURSE' OR 'CUT AND RUN'?: Elizabeth Newman wrote, "Whatever the cause of the Williams sisters' discomfort, it's time to clean up this mess that they have made all over themselves. If they're sick of tennis and want to party, they should retire now while people still remember their greatness. Take a bow and make a stylish exit before the Williams name is forever tarnished."

SPEAKING OF TARNISHED: After Justine Henin-Hardenne quit while losing the Aussie Open final, Pam Shriver noted, "A major final is sacred. Short of any type of major injury, you keep going...My respect level disintegrated, especially when I heard her rationale...For the moment, Henin's reputation is tarnished forever."

NEW WAY FORWARD: McEnroe suggested that players get just one Hawk-Eye challenge per set, and if they are wrong twice, they lose a point...Our favorite letter to the editor on grunting proposed "a player that squeals on two consecutive strokes should lose the point."

DON'T 'TRICK IT UP': Mary Carillo asserted, "The powers that be at the networks don't trust that the sport is compelling enough. They'll do anything to trick it up because they don't appreciate its beauty, its subtleties, its very nature."

Accountability 101: Reflecting on the sad reality that the U.S. has not won a World Group tie on foreign soil during Pat McEnroe's '01-'06 reign as Davis Cup captain, Andy Roddick said, "We just have to figure out a way to get past the current away-tie-on-clay roadblock...More specifically, I have to figure it out."

QUESTIONS: What is more reliable: tennis' instant replay machine or electronic voting machines?...Will women's tennis promoters actually pay $4 million more for rights fees to host "A" level tournaments and will the requirements gut existing tournaments in Palo Alto and Carson?...When will the men's field rise and become competitive with Federer?

MARK FOLEY REDUX: Pro Tara Snyder claimed that coach Joe Giuliano (who was accused of sexual improprieties and subsequently banned from the tour) "had a middle seat on the express train to hell."

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON: Years ago, an African witch doctor healed Yannick Noah's bum knee by beating it with a panther tail. In '06 his son, Joakim, said his Florida hoops team won the NCAA Championships because his grandfather in the Cameroons sacrificed a chicken before the game.

THE BATTLE OF THE BAD DADS:
• The once promising Mirjana Lucic told writer Wayne Coffey that her father regularly beat her with a Timberland shoe and after defaulting from an event when she was 14, put her in a bathtub and beat her for 40 minutes. When he was done, he gave her money to go buy ice cream.
• Christophe Fauviau, who admitted drugging his children's opponents, which led to the death of a 25-year-old player, was sentenced to eight years in a French prison. The former military pilot spiked more than 25 water bottles with a drug that causes drowsiness.

AND NOW, AN UPDATE FROM OUR GOOD DAD DEPT.: Agassi said, "I'll be thrilled if my child can grow up to be half the man Gil Reyes is. And thrilled if I prove to be half the father he is."

THE BATTLE OF 'THE DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK' EXCUSES: Sesil Karatancheva, 16, claimed she tested positive for drugs because she was pregnant...Argentine Mariano Hood said his positive test was due to the treatment he was taking for hair loss...After Katerina Bohmova was busted for shoplifting, she explained she had been looking for a bathroom and thought she didn't have to pay as long as she stayed inside the Jacksonville shopping mall...When Nadal broke Guillermo Vilas' record for consecutive clay-court wins, the Argentine claimed Nadal padded his streak by playing easy tournaments and whined that his own streak was broken because Ilie Nastase used a trick racket...U.S. Open semifinalist Jelena Jankovic blamed her loss on the wind, the ump, a lapse in concentration, a double fault and Henin-Hardenne, who "was acting like she had pain in her back and was trying to start me thinking."

THE BATTLE OF THE FED-NADAL COMPARISONS:
CONTESTANT NO. 1: Simon Barnes noted, "Federer's game is all about elegance and flow; Nadal disrupts it like a street thug crashing a cotillion. That he does so while oozing testosterone, flexing his biceps in a sleeveless shirt, only seals the image of a man's man, Marlon Brando to Federer's Fred Astaire."
CONTESTANT NO. 2: Christopher Clarey noted, "Federer, with his grace and flow and polished technique...[appeals] above all to the older set; he is even wearing all white this spring. Nadal, with his soccer mannerisms and pirate pants and more unorthodox technique, seems tailor-made, if not exclusively made, for the younger generation. Federer, the neatnik, doesn't like you seeing him sweat. Nadal, long hair flapping under his bandana and biceps glistening in the afternoon heat, couldn't care less if you notice. Federer is for the introverts, Nadal for the extroverts. Federer is for the artists, Nadal for the hustlers."

GREEK PHILOSOPHY IS ALIVE AND WELL: Marcos Baghdatis, the Aussie Open finalist, said he would not change "because I am just a simple guy from Cyprus. I have simple people around me. What I have to do now is live simply like before."

GREEK HISTORY IS NOT SO ALIVE AND WELL: Georgia's retired coach Dan MacGill — the great Southern character and hometown advocate — claimed Athens, Greece, was named after Athens, Georgia — the home of the University of Georgia.

BEATLES HISTORY IS ALIVE AND WELL: In a Newsweek interview, Sir John Martin, who signed and produced the Beatles, recalled just how cool John Lennon was, then added, "But there are plenty of cool people around now - Ravi Shankar for one, and Roger Federer for another. But not George Bush."

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