Great things come in insignificant packages

Sometimes, the most exciting sporting events happen when you least expect them.\nCase in point was Sunday night's third round U.S. Open tennis match between James Blake and Roger Federer. Read the agate type and one finds that Federer, the No. 2 seed, dropped the unseeded Blake like a bad habit, 6-3, 7-6, 6-3.\nIf you watched the second set, though, you watched perhaps the most gripping 68 minutes of tennis that has been played in years. Or maybe it was only the most tennis in mere hours after Younes El Aynaoui outlasted Jiri Novak in a fifth-set tiebreak earlier in the day.\nThe second set between Blake and Federer was classic though. In boxing, they say styles make fights, but this saying could have applied to tennis in this instance.\nFederer is the smooth operator out there. He's not very emotional, and it's hard to tell by watching whether he's winning or not. In that way, he's the anti-Andy Roddick. He's got the all-court game, showing an ability to play at the net and at the baseline. He's also got a great serve.\nFederer is also the best in the current game at constructing points. What I mean is that he's the best at placing the ball exactly where he wants. He always makes sure to run his opponent around to the point of exhaustion. He seizes on an opponent's weakness and preys on it until the opponent falls apart. \nBlake, meanwhile, is an interesting player and just about impossible to root against. Born in Yonkers, N.Y., he hardly had the typical tennis upbringing. When he was 13, doctors diagnosed him with scoliosis, forcing him to wear a back brace 18 hours a day. (He's 6'1", and doctors say the scoliosis kept him from being 6'3" or taller.) \nCollegiately, he then attended the tennis hotbed that is ... Harvard. Smart and athletic, what more could a guy have going for him? Well, in October 2001, Blake, 23, signed with the IMG Modeling Agency. Last November, People magazine named him the Sexiest Athlete Alive. Well, now that Tony Mandarich has retired, somebody had to win it.\nBlake's style of play is very different from Federer's. While Federer's style is coolly analytical, Blake's is more furiously paced. He has the fastest feet in the game, running down shots that few others can retrieve. In his second round match against Sargis Sargsian, he ran down what was going to be an easy overhead smash, leaped and somehow sent it back faster than it had come. \nBlake also features the same hard serve and whistling forehand, though perhaps not of the nature of Roddick. \nDuring the match, Federer won the first set fairly easily, frustrating Blake on his serve while easily holding his own. Then came the epic second set.\nFederer had eight break points in game three, but Blake won a 10-deuce marathon. Blake repeatedly came up with his best stuff to thwart Federer just when he looked like he might break the match wide open. There was another six-deuce game later, and Blake won that too. Every point had the crowd going crazy, and they eventually gave both players, especially the momentarily victorious Blake, a standing ovation after winning those games. \nFederer eventually served for the set at 5-4, and Blake broke him to get back even. Federer, though, held at 5-6 to force a tiebreaker and then won the tiebreaker 7-4. Throughout the whole thing, Federer never cracked, reacting as if it were some sort of backyard practice session. He successfully lobbed Blake despite Blake's athleticism and hang time. The lob needed to be perfect, and it was.\nWhen Federer won the set in a tiebreaker even though he had converted only one of 20 break chances, the air was clearly out of Blake's balloon. The crowd could help no more.\nFederer convincingly won the third set 6-3, but it was already academic.\nThe Federer-Blake match only proved what has been obvious for a while now: Men's tennis is superior to the women's game. While the Williams sisters miss the Open with injuries, the women's competition now has all the excitement of tiddlywinks. Matches are frequently lopsided and take less than an hour. Jennifer Capriati, the world's most obnoxious athlete, complained that the blimp flying overhead during one of her matches was making too much noise. Aaargh.\nMeanwhile, men's tennis remains extraordinarily competitive. Anybody in the top 50 can beat anybody else. Even the matches that seem like routs, like Federer-Blake, aren't really.\nAnd they provide unexpected thrills for a guy watching on a TV set in Indiana.