Kvitova wins the WTA Championship!

Okay – any guesses what Marat Safin’s going to be this Halloween?

Nope…not a “consistent athlete” for once, but good guess.

Hello? Is this thing on?

I have no idea why you never guessed humble, yet esteemed member of the Russian Parliament! In fact, why stop at Halloween? He’s actually ready for election to the State Duma on December 4th.

And just like he trained as a professional tennis player, he’ll work hard and do whatever it takes to get elected…

…until something pisses him off.

…or until he loses interest.

But he is committed, damn it – Just ask him!

And just how humble a public servant will he be? My favorite quote has to be the last line of the previous “linked” story: “I could be the best looking guy in the Duma,” Safin said. “But that’s only because all the other guys are over 60.”

Awesome – we are now just five-weeks away from Safin tweeting photos of his junk.

Hey – how about that Petra Kvitova?! She won the year-end WTA Championship in Istanbul over the weekend…while the rest of Turkey focused on finding survivors in the aftermath of last week’s deadly 7.2-magnitude earthquake. (Nearly 600 have perished – tennis anyone?)

Check out this story: Eight-month-old baby survived three days in cupboard drawer after falling in during Turkish earthquake

Trust me when I say, there are quite a few tennis-heads drinking the Kvitova Kool-Aid after her win at Wimbledon and the amazing year she’s had – Mats Wilander even took the opportunity to take a few jabs at the top-Dane, Caroline Wozniacki, with his breakdown of Kvitova’s win.

Some great points, for my money Mats – and I don’t say that because you travel the States giving tennis lessons from wherever you camp your RV. Seriously – did you know this about Wilander? Check it out here

Someone tell him to be watching for my ’89 Winnebago Warrior this Summer. If I can actually get it out of the driveway, I’ll hit one of his camps and provide the play-by-play. Maybe I can get him to fix my leaky toilet.

By the way – one of the highlights of Petra’s success for me…HAS to be hearing American announcers (including myself) completely butcher her name on a regular basis. Here are three versions of how her name is pronounced in the Czech Republic. GOOD LUCK!

Congrats to South African, now American, and former WTT Springfield Laser Liezel Huber – who finished the year ranked as the top doubles player in the world. She and Lisa Raymond won in Istanbul over the weekend, as well. Good peoples – always gracious every time they’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of being interviewed by me…

The guys played in St. Petersburg and Vienna over the weekend – Tsonga won a 3-set thriller over Juan Martin del Potro in the Austrian Final. It was Croatian Marin Cilic over Serbian Janko Tipsarevic in the Russian Final. (Just one of those matches, like it or not, where the political tension goes deeper than sport – yet the players today seem completely unfazed by the history…hmm)

This week, the ante’s been upped with ATP-500 events in Federer’s hometown and in Valencia, Spain. Congrats to Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish – made it into the Basel doubles quarterfinals today with an 11-9 second set tie-break win over Radek Stepanek and Lucas Kubot.

Happy Halloween, Tennis fans…unless you work in retail. If that’s the case: Happy Easter – good luck storing the Christmas decorations. We’ll talk tennis again next Monday.