Serena sleepwalked through the match, but won in straight sets.

HAD THE CHANCE to attend the Rogers Cup tennis tournament Saturday evening.

The featured match was a semi-final between Serena Williams – in the midst of a comeback following health issues – and Victoria Azarenka, the Belarusian who is attracting quite a bit of notoriety, and criticism, for her on-court grunting, which the Globe and Mail aptly described as “a high-pitched warble (that) lingers for almost two seconds”:

Unfortunately, the match was a bit of a bore. Serena didn’t even look like she was trying, yet still managed to finish off an exasperated Azarenka in straight sets.

They couldn’t compete with the “Legends” match that followed between tennis greats Andre Agassi and Jim Courier. Prior to the start of the Rogers Cup, the organizers had gotten in trouble with women’s groups for ads promoting the event that invited fans to “Come for the ladies. Stay for the legends.” It was subsequently changed to the considerably lamer “Making history. Re-living history.”

Far as I was concerned, though, the legends outdid the ladies by a long shot. Agassi and Courier, despite being past their prime, delivered a more entertaining match, even if they were goofing around half the time – which is part of the show, after all. These guys obviously have never lost their competitive streaks, and it made for some great tennis (“they’ve still got it,” I found myself muttering quite a bit during the match).

The best part, for me at least, came after it was all over. It’s tradition at most tennis tournaments for the winner to sign balls and hit them into the stands for appreciative fans. So it was in Toronto. Agassi, who had just finished off Courier in straight sets, was whacking balls all around the stadium as fans hooted and hollered in an effort to attract his attention.

With one ball left, he turned toward where I was standing, drew back his racket and lobbed that fuzzy yellow ball high into the night sky.

It didn’t take me long to realize: Holy shit, it’s coming right to me! I excitedly moved into the aisle, kept my eye on the ball as it arced, descended, and lo and behold, the thing landed right in my hands – except I fumbled it, the ball fell away from me and I had to fight off a few other fans to re-claim my prized possession.

A prize indeed. Agassi was an idol of mine growing up; the rocker tennis star who played by his own rules. To see him live on court – albeit a decade late – and then get an autographed memento delivered straight from his racket, was pretty sweet.

My Rogers Cup experience might have started off as a snooze-fest, but in the end I had a ball.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

The next one?

The ill-fated ball club on Friday signed Wayne Gretzky’s 18-year-old son Trevor, whom they’d picked in the seventh round of the amateur draft in June. Wonder if he’ll wear No. 99…

Son of Gretzky isn’t a hockey player,  at least not good enough of one to go pro. But he’s not a half-bad baseball player. According to MLB.com, Trevor finished his senior season with a .393 batting average, with one home run and 27 RBIs in 31 games in 2011.

He’s not posting spectacular, prodigious numbers just yet; to be fair, the young Gretzky is recovering from injury. But if I were the Cubs, a team with little left to lose, I’d take a chance on a kid named Gretzky, too.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

The host thought he was interviewing Ben Walker, the baseball editor for the Associated Press, about the Roger Clemens trial.

Turns out the guest was actually Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair contributor and author of a Rupert Murdoch biography, who promptly shuts down the interviewer – a clip that is as awkward as it is hilarious, especially since the presenter then unabashedly and abruptly cuts Wolff off and moves on to other news):

This harks back to a similar goof in 2006 when the BBC interviewed Guy Goma, who had shown up for a job interview at the Beeb but was mistaken for Guy Kewney – a technology expert – and shuffled onto the set to offer his thoughts on Apple’s court case with The Beatles’ record company.

Unlike Wolff though, Guy Goma at least attempted to bullshit his way through the appearance, which you sort of have to admire. But then, he wasn’t cut off by the presenter. Regardless, it also made for great television:

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

With how inconsistently Canucks’ netminder Roberto Luongo has performed outside of his home rink - getting yanked in Game 6 after being shelled with three goals before the first half of the opening period was through – it’s really anybody’s guess as to whether the Canucks will prevail tonight, even if they are now back in their Vancouver safety zone.

Regardless of whether Vancouver wins, becoming the first Canadian team to hoist the Cup since 1993, I’m not convinced they deserve it. Luongo’s crappiness aside, Vancouver’s play has not exactly been the stuff of champions in this series (ditto for their work in the opening series against the Chicago Blackhawks).

But hey, who am I to talk? My hometown Toronto Maple Leafs have been Cup-less since 1967, and Vancouver fans would the first to note this. Still, I’m fully willing to admit that I’m jealous as hell of them right now; damn, wish I was anxiously awaiting the fate of my squad in Game 7 of the Cup final.

Reportedly a pair of tickets for this all-important game sold for $7,800 a piece. It got me thinking how much I would shell out to see the Leafs battle for Lord Stanley’s mug (if that day ever comes…)

Not sure I could bear spending nearly eight grand, though, even it was for a once-in-a-lifetime experience – especially if my financial well-being hinged on the play of a goalie as erratic as Leaky Luongo.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

Surely what Canucks forward and Game 1 hero Raffi Torres does in his spare time has little to do with what happens on the ice.

Perhaps NHL.com should look into hiring a late-night copy editor. I mean you’d have to think NHL commissioner Gary Bettman would find this big screw-up by the league’s official website, er, hard to handle.

(Kudos to the blog Flyers Goal Scored By for snagging this brutal but hilarious goof.)

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

AT LONG LAST

While it’ll be exciting to see who prevails in what promises to be a pitched battle between the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks, I have to admit, I do think that the epic fight for hockey’s holy grail goes on just a wee bit too long.

I say this as an avid hockey fan, one who has been deprived of post-season action featuring my ill-fated hometown Toronto Maple Leafs for I can’t remember how long (OK, it’s been since 2004 … sigh … and we haven’t won the frickin’ cup since 1967 … sniffle).

Now just to be clear: I’m not opposed to the number of games involved in the NHL playoffs – there’s a reason it’s considered among the most grueling championships to win. It just seems a bit odd that the playoffs stretch all the way to June; surely there’s a way they could compress things a bit more, if only so we can have a Stanley Cup champ crowned a tad sooner than a couple of weeks before summer.

Anyway. Whatever. Fat chance of that happening, especially since NBC dictates to the NHL how it should schedule the post-season action.

So here we are. And it should be a great final, with the very real prospect that Canada might end up reclaiming Lord Stanley’s mug via the Vancouver Canucks, who have never won the cup (and unlike with the Montreal Canadiens last year, I wish the Nucks all the luck in the world in doing so).Of course the Boston Bruins – cup-less since their 1970s heyday – might have something to say about that.

Problem is, with NBC calling the TV scheduling shots, there’s a risk of the momentum getting sucked out of what has so far been a fairly exciting playoff season.

The Bruins beat Tampa Bay to make it to the final last Friday night, but the first game of the series doesn’t start until Wednesday of this week. After that, fans will have to wait another three nights to see the next battle on Saturday.

If the NHL is so interested in attracting more fans to the game, sucking the energy out of the most exciting moment in the hockey season seems an odd way of accomplishing that goal.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

FANS OF OLD SCHOOL

The WWF legend, 58, reportedly suffered a heart attack while driving his car in Florida on Friday and crashed his Jeep into a tree.

If you grew up watching WWF wrestling – in the years before it got stupid and unimaginative – ‘Macho Man’ was arguably the most colourful of all the old school characters.

He wore ridiculous outfits – capes, bandanas, sunglasses, cowboy hat, lots of neon – and entered the ring to the strains of ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’ And with his deep raspy voice and catchphrase, ‘Oooh yeah, dig it!” Savage could produce the best shit-talking segments:

Among groups of boys mimicking WWF wrestling sequences in suburban basements across North America in the mid to late 1980s – a great way to destroy furniture, BTW – one kid was always guaranteed to want to “be” Macho Man (if Hulk Hogan or Ultimate Warrior weren’t already taken, I suppose).

I don’t know what became of Savage over the years, but surely he deserved a better ending than this. The kid in me wishes Macho Man could have been finished off by one of Hogan’s legendary atomic leg drops.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

I JUST DON’T GET the appeal of Ultimate Fighting Championship.

But I’m in the minority, apparently – last night 55,000 people packed Rogers Centre (née SkyDome) to witness the Toronto debut of the bloody spectacle.

While I fail to understand what’s so great about MMA – bring back 1980s WWF wrestling, I say! – fans of the sport likely wouldn’t understand why I was up at 6 a.m. Friday morning to watch the royal wedding.

To each his own, I suppose. And I’m certainly not planning on raising the issue with UFC enthusiasts; I’d rather not get my head kicked in by a gang of skinheads hopped up on energy drinks.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

If you haven’t seen it, witness gigantic Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chara mess up Montreal Canadiens’ forward Max Pacioretty earlier this week, leaving him with fractured vertebrae and a concussion:

The hit, although pretty typical, albeit with brutal results, sparked calls for Chara – who’s not seen as an overly aggressive player – to be fined and suspended, which the NHL quickly dismissed. This has intensified concerns that the league isn’t interested in doing more to ensure the on-ice safety of the players.

It’s strange, given that the NHL’s biggest star, Sidney Crosby, has been out of the game for the past three months, nursing a concussion he suffered as the result of a nasty headshot. Some analysts have gone so far as to wonder whether Sid the Kid, Canada’s Golden Boy, will ever play again.

Following Chara’s grand slam, Air Canada entered the fray, threatening to cancel its multimillion dollar sponsorship deals with the Canadian teams unless the NHL takes “immediate action” to curtail “life-threatening injuries.”

I’m not sure what Air Canada thinks it can achieve here, or if it will even follow through on its threat. And it’s hard to see how the NHL would allow one single sponsor – of a measly six Canadian teams – to bully it into doing anything. Air Canada’s sponsorship dollars are chump change in the grand scheme of things.

But kudos to the airline for doing the right thing in taking the NHL to task. At its very least, this is obviously a great public relations move for a company serving a country that holds hockey more sacred than anything else. Would be nice to see other sponsors follow suit by vowing to end their sponsorships, too. That might put some real pressure on the league to do more to curb headshots and excessive violence in the game.

For the moment, though, Air Canada’s flying solo.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

On Saturday Russia’s Olympic organizing committee unveiled a trio of 2014 Sochi Winter Games mascots: a snowboarding snow leopard, an Arctic-exploring polar bear, and a figure skating bunny:

Far as I’m concerned they’re a heck of a lot better than those weird, indecipherable mascots they had for the Vancouver Olympics:

The Vancouver characters were inspired by mythological First Nations creatures, which is cool, but I think they ended up missing the mark.

What good are mascots if people have no clue what they’re supposed to be (for the record: a winged animal guardian spirit, an earmuff-wearing sasquatch and a mythical sea bear), let alone how to pronounce their names, and, well, what does any of this have to do with Vancouver anyhow?

Nothing confusing or odd about that bad-ass snowboarding Sochi snow leopard, though. Apparently the cat was the top vote-getter from the Russian people and was the pronounced favourite of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – with good reason, that’s one great mascot.

Not so great on the Russians’ part? The Paralympics mascots are a pair of extraterrestrials.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com