Faulkner

That's what I love about tennis. The intricacies of the game, plus the adjustments one must make to the different courts, surfaces, weather conditions, etc. And I'd never considered Nenad Zimonjic hot, but whoa daddy. He's wearing his age very well. Doubles has underrated eye candy like Treat Huey.

Venus gets through! Looking like she may get a rematch of the Aus Open semifinal she won against Coco (unless Lucie Safarova has something to say about it). BeIN is on a different cable tier for me, and I'm not paying all that extra money for that.

Venus comes back to win the second set. Too bad TC was showing the damn Berdych match and interviewing Fabio Fognini for most of it. I don't understand some of their programming choices.

Yeah, she looks pretty hobbled. IW plays pretty slow so it doesn't much suit her anyway.

Fognini beats Tsonga. Jo-Willie must have been gassed from playing so much tennis in the past few months.

Too bad about Monica Puig. She looked so solid in that first set against Pliskobot, but the errors crept in.

Donald makes things harder on himself than they need to be. That was a rough tiebreak. If Querrey is in form, he'll decimate Donald.

I'm stunned at the amount of bad line calls at this year's Indian Wells. Something is up with DY that's beyond what's happening on that court. Glad that he recovered and took the first set.

So many bad line calls. It's been a while since I've seen so many. There were a bunch in the Beck/Bouchard match as well. Harrison sucks, but it seems like Dzumhur sucks more unfortunately. What's with Ryan calling a trainer because he was tired?!?! EDIT: Wow, Dzumhur won.

And Genie gets the heave-ho by Annika Beck. I almost felt bad for Genie. Almost.

Hopefully he shakes that off and grows from it. He'll need to find some consistency. But he's the best of the NextGen Americans by a wide margin I think. He doesn't get the hype Taylor Fritz got.

We'll see about Madison. She's undeniably talented, but she easily comes unglued in matches. She has a poor record against most of the top players. But she's young, and there's room for improvement. She's certainly the best female prospect. I'm bullish on Tiafoe. He's very young, and I think his game will really blossom in the next couple of years.

Yeah, tough match for Frances, but Lajovic was so steady. Looking forward to Venus vs Jankovic. Saw Lepchenko beat Shvedova, a rare American victory. The TC panelists were throwing shade about Donna Vekic getting a wild card into Indian Wells above American players. They were speculating that Stanimal pulled some strings.

Bernie Tomic is so embarrassing. He just doesn't give a [!@#$%^&*], does he?

Not a shocker but I hoped that she'd be able to play. Serena's playing for 25 now, not ranking points, and it's good that she's being careful about her health. The break she took between the U.S. Open and Melbourne really helped her get back into dominating shape. In terms of ranking points, she was defending a ton from making the final last year against Vika. Apparently she's out of Miami as well. http://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2017/03/serena-williams-withdraws-indian-wells-angelique-kerber-no-1/64666/

Querrey pulls it off. There's maybe something to be said about Kyrgios only really bringing his A-game for Fedalovic.

Honestly, the WTA has made it so difficult to watch matches that I've become a bit apathetic about the women's game outside of the Slams and bigger tournaments. Watching the smaller tournaments is how you discover exciting new talent to root for. But when they present so many barriers to viewing, you just give up and stop following the sport as much. I did see Svitolina beat Wozniacki in Dubai a couple weekends ago. Nadal is currently dismantling Marin Cilic on the TV right now.

I'm not too worried about Novak. I thought he was in decent form today against a huge server he'd never played before. I think there's reason to be optimistic based on his performance. Interestingly, Nishikori has beaten Kyrgios all three times they've played. Gasquet has beaten Nick five times (same as Murray) but lost to him twice.

Kyrgios defeated Novak, who completely collapsed in that last game. Until that last brain fart of a game, I actually thought Novak played the best I've seen him play in a while. He was just up against a hot opponent. Seriously, Kyrgios' serve was basically unplayable. One of the commentators said it was Sampras-like, and that's pretty accurate.

Apparently Thiem beat Querrey in straights at last year's Acapulco. That was their only previous meeting. Novak is playing Kyrgios for the first time right now, and Nick is in scary form on serve. I remember that Nick beat Fed the first and only time they played.

Yikes, Thiem goes out to Sam Effin' Querrey.

I know. I almost had a heart attack watching that. One of the most intense tiebreakers I've watched. Too bad Kohlschreiber wilted in that third set.

Djokovic avenges his Olympics loss to Delpo in three tight sets.

Holy sh!t.

It'll be interesting. Neither played their best in their opening round matches, but they came through when it counted. I can't imagine Novak wants a repeat of the Rio Olympics match.