Foggy weather =

...not so good tennis weather. I feel like I woke up in Seattle by way of London. We had one good day this week -- good meaning 67 degrees and sunny with no wind. It was amazing. By far the best day I can remember in a long time. Unfortunately yesterday and today have been foggy and cold and now a little snowy. Not the best weather for sports.

I can't wait for Davis Cup to start. I just hope we get it on TV here; the damn Tennis Channel is trying to monopolize TV coverage of the sport...bad news is that barely anyone GETS the Tennis Channel. I know they bought the rights to air at least one of the grand slams, so I guess I won't get to watch that one. Hopefully the OLN is still around, but since I can't find a link to it they might be out of business. That would be about right.

These are the matchups for all eight Davis Cup ties. Nothing else is going on, so here are my predictions. For the sake of time and accuracy, you'll just have to go without the score line. The winner will be sufficient

• FRANCE over Romania


• Croatia over GERMANY


• BELGIUM over Australia


• USA over CZECH REPUBLIC


• Spain over SWITZERLAND


• Sweden over BELARUS


• AUSTRIA over Argentina


• CHILE over Russia

Davis Cup is not the easiest thing to predict. In college matches (or most other levels of play, for that matter), if I have to play some guy from Mexico who is ranked 3rd in the region and hits the piss out of the ball, I'm just going to lose. I'm not good enough to keep up with him. I like to play people like that, but I'm probably not going to take many games off of him.

However, with Davis Cup, everyone is a professional. There is a certain level of quality that every player possesses, a certain degree of ability that gets them to that level in the first place. After that a lot of it is planning and mindset, conditioning and coaching. And oh yeah, emotion! You're playing for your country! How insane would that be? I want to go to a Davis Cup match sometime, but I guess I'll just have to put that on the list next to "Visit Anfield in May" on the list of things to do.