Sportscast Daily

For the tennis fans out there, Andy Roddick, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal thrived at Dubai Tennis Championships. Each of them has proceeded to the second round Tuesday. Nadal have beaten Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany at 3-6, 6-1 and 6-4, while Roddick have defeated Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain at 6-2, 6-4. He made 18 aces, 4 of them was done in the second round. Djokovic have crushed the Croatian player, Marin Cilic at 6-4, 6-3. Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic also proceeded, defeating the French player, Gael Monfils at 6-3, 6-2.

Many players also reached the second round like, Mikhail Ledovskikh of Russia, Olivier Rochus of Belgium and more.

Washington Wizards point guard superstar, Gilbert Arenas will return to practice from his long recovery in his knee surgery. Arenas’ injury took up for a year, and he had last surgery last April and followed by two more surgical operations last November. Arenas also took some drills, two weeks ago. But there is no schedule for his return to the team, who are also missing All-star forward Caron Butler, who has a hip injury.

In spite of Arenas’ injury, Wizards were still competing for the Southeast Division title. Washington have won four of its past five games, and move within one game, and well enough for the sixth place in the Eastern Conference.

Unseeded Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka won an entertaining tussle with American James Blake 6-7 7-6 6-1 to go through to the semi-finals of the Rome Masters on Friday.Wawrinka made a confident start, breaking Blake in the third game. But the American eighth seed held his nerve, broke back in the eighth game and took the first set in a tiebreak.

Blake showed more resilience in the second set, saving four set points when 5-3 down and two more in the tiebreak before Wawrinka leveled the score with a sweet backhand winner down the line.

The Swiss, who had treatment on back and leg problems at the end of the second set, used the momentum from the tiebreak win to romp home in the decider.

Wawrinka, who had beaten former world number ones Juan Carlos Ferrero and Marat Safin and Britain’s Andy Murray to reach this stage, will meet the winner of the match between top American Andy Roddick and Spain’s Tommy Robredo.

In the last National Football League Drafts, March 1, 2008, Alan Faneca signed a forty-million dollar contract with twenty-one million dollar guaranteed money under the New York Jets. It is also believed that Faneca is the highest paid offensive lineman in NFL history. The team expects that he will lead the team to the championships.

Also, last March 2, 2008, the New York Jets welcomed the Detroit Lions’ extreme offensive lineman Damien Woody. Woody agreed a five-year, twenty-five million dollar contract with eleven million dollar guaranteed money.  Now that the Jets want to advance their offensive line, they predict that they will win the coming matches.

According to ESPN news, during the Australian Open, Roger Federer who won over Janko Tipsarevic played the longest 5th set tennis match of his career. After 4 hours of game, Federer was able to gain the title of being the No.1 in Australian Open.

Their fight was very close that there were frequent ties during the match. Indeed, Tipsarevic was also a really great opponent. They were both competitive, no wonder that the game lasted for 4 hours. I just imagine the excitement among the audience. But just like in any other game, there must be a winner and a loser. Federer was lucky that time that he was able to smell the victory he is aiming.

Georgia Frontier is the owner of Rams, a football team. Aside from being the owner of the team, she served as a mother to the players, coaches, and staff. Sadly, at the age of 80, she died because of breast cancer. Despite her illness, she still did her best to be able to help people being involved in several philanthropic efforts. She built the St. Louis Rams Foundation and even donated $1 million to help the needy high school students for their college. Being called as the First Lady of Sports surely makes Frontier fulfilled and happy. She will surely remain as the First Lady of Sports in the hearts of every people she touched.

 All eyes were on Blanka Vlasic, Croatia’s world’s champion high jumper in while in Doha, Qatar for the Qatar Super Grand Prix. Blanka talks about her major goal in winning in the Beijing Olympics for the high jump event in an interview with the media. Many believe that Blanka can also beat the world record  of 2.09 meters set by the Bulgarian Champion on 1987, Stefka Kostadinova since Blanka’s greatest record is 2.07  and her recent performance were fantastic. August is fast approaching and Vlasic is ready to go for her goal.  Seeing her confident is just like seeing the winner!

Authorities were called to Club Space after a fight broke out. McKinnie had been thrown out by a nightclub security guard and was arguing and spit on Eric Otero, according to a police report. Otero, 32, said he wouldn’t press charges if McKinnie left. Authorities said the former University of Miami player then went to a nearby strip club, but later returned to Club Space and fought with Otero again. Miami Police found McKinnie “in the middle of a large crowd, throwing punches and again yelling obscenities,” according to the police report. Police told McKinnie to stop. He refused and boarded a bus. The bus driver was ordered not to drive away.

Source: sports.yahoo.com

�No pain. No gain.�� This is very true especially in any sports. Just like what happened to Sidney Crosby whose ankle was sprained during the Pittsburgh-Penguins game. His right ankle was twisted to the side. He needs to be examined by the doctors because his incident is not a simple sprain. Because of the injury of Crosby, The Penguins took advantage and won over Pittsburgh with a score of 3-0.

Many athletes encounter injuries. But most of them, after their accidents, they still go back and play what they want. I guess it�s really their passion that drives them to play even though they know the danger they could get from it. I know most of them would say: �No pain. No gain.�

Dana Stubblefield was a former football defense player. Currently, he is the defensive line coach of the varsity at the Valley Christian High School in California. After the 5-year investigation on the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) incident, he was pleaded guilty. Sadly, he was the second athlete aside from Marion Jones who lied to federal agents regarding the use of performance-enhancing drugs or steroids. The school where Stubblefield is working with doesn�t have any decision yet whether they would still let Stubblefield work with them.

I think Stubblefield has some regrets regarding the issue. Based on his records, he won a lot of titles from 1993 until 2004. I�m sure his own skill per se can lead him to victory even without the use of any steroids. This issue would be a great lesson for any athletes. I hope that cases like this would not happen again.