Juan Martin Del Potro Defeats Andy Roddick In Legg Mason Title Match Played On The Sun, Apparently

We kid — the Legg Mason Tennis Classic is played in Washington DC. But if you read any coverage of Juan Martin Del Potro’s second consecutive win there you’d know two important things: he defeated Andy Roddick 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (6) after two and a half grueling hours and it was hotter than a Turkish bath house out there.

By all accounts, the heat played as integral a part of this thing as the tennis itself. Del Potro struggled early, giving up the first set to Roddick in only 37 minutes after toiling through a humid mid-afternoon semi-final match the day before. But as the day wore on, Del Potro found his nerve and eventually rode to victory on the strength of 19 aces. It was the first finals loss at Legg Mason for Roddick, who had spent the last month recovering from a hip injury sustained at Wimbledon.

But oh did you hear it was HOT, so very hot. Every single news story commented on length about this, because the muggy 90 degree weather turned our mighty global tennis titans into cement-footed swamp blobs, particularly Del Potro. The 20-year old Argentinian complained openly after his semi-final match, and spent pretty much the first hour and a half of the final stammering and hallucinating until he was able to snap out of it in the middle of the second set. The crowd wasn’t immune either, with one fan at one point shouting at a listless Roddick, “”Let’s GO, Andy! It’s HOT!”

The Washington Post really hammed it up, however, with another one of those “we’re like a blog on newsprint” kind of things they’ve been doing a lot of lately. This time it’s Tracee Hamilton throwing down the kind of one-liners that would make Dave Barry roll his eyes. Motherfucking Dave Barry:

The gently nodding flags atop the stadium were the only hints that there was a breeze, or a God. I don’t want to say it was hot, but I had to change my shirt so many times ESPN lost its G rating. As one of my, ah, television colleagues put it, we were all schvitzing like Airedales.

And so on. Nine hundred words of this.

Now, we don’t want to claim that the internet has a monopoly on irreverent news reporting or commenting or whatever. That would be just silly. But if the old emm-ess-emm wants to keep up they’re gonna have to bring their A game. For most tennis players, the Legg Mason is just a warm-up for the US Open at the end of August. Let’s hope sports journalists are just warming up, too, so we don’t have to look forward to lame-o “How hot was it?” jokes coming out of Flushing Meadows.

Click on the pic below to check out a gallery of Juan Martin Del Potro’s victory at the Legg Mason

Del Potro aces Roddick in thriller [SI.com]
Fans All Aflutter During Legg Mason Final [WaPo]