Yahoo’s Chris Chase joins the show to talk about the US Open tennis tournament that started yesterday. As we taped the interview yesterday afternoon, thankfully nobody big got bounced last night.

We start with talk of Busted Racquet, the new Yahoo tennis blog where, oddly enough, Chase is the editor. Unlike some of the other blogs at Yahoo, a tennis-specific blog isn’t going to grab the attention of the regular sports traffic, so what have they done in these initial few weeks to get some eyes to a new site like Busted Racquet?

What’s that you say? You’ve signed on Andy Roddick to guest blog

for you during the US Open? Yeah, that’ll work nicely.

It’s also interesting with any of the Yahoo blogs to wonder exactly who the audience is. Are they people who go to Yahoo for their sports coverage and wander over to the tennis blog because people keep talking about this US Open thing going on? Or is it die-hard tennis fans who are looking for a new place to find content?

We discuss the balance of covering the sport of tennis -- with a lot of that coverage coming from Yahoo’s Martin Rogers -- with the bloggy side of

things, including off-the-court news and notes of interest. So yes, you’ll get in-depth coverage of the Open, and subsequent tournaments, but you’ll also get the latest information on Roger Federer’s clothing line, and (I’ll assume) copious amounts of crowd shots of Brooklyn Decker. There has to be a balance somewhere, right?

We try to put the US Open into tennis perspective, using the golf analogy. If the Masters is the most revered tournament in golf, is that the same as Wimbledon? Is the PGA the Australian? We discuss which tennis tournament is the more important to the sport, the French or the US Open, which always seems to just sneak up on us every year at the start of football season. That said, Chase thinks the US Open is equatable to, well, the US Open in golf. The lore of the national championship really does add to the event. So does, Chase admits, the prime-time nature of the matches.

But is that good for the sport? I’m sure I sound like an old man when we discuss some of the start time and wonder if it’s in the best interest of the sport to start marquee matches in the 9 and 10 o’clock hours.

Speaking of start times, we debate the merits of having the men’s final at 4pm on the first Sunday of the NFL season. Does that make any sense? Why not back it up a day and compete with the college games? Is tennis doing a disservice (get it) by putting the US Open up against football. Or, like the Yahoo blogs, is it simply a different audience and the potential crossovers (me, Chris, you, etc) aren’t enough to worry about?

We talk about match fixing and if that’s a problem with American tournaments as much as those in Europe. And we talk about the new Twitter policy, that the USTA claims is in place to curtail insider information that leads to betting scandals. But if it’s on Twitter, is it really inside information anymore?

We discuss John McEnroe and decide that he’s the best color analyst in any sport. Charles Barkley is great in the studio, but nobody is better than McEnroe in the moment of the match. Which leads us to lament the fact that his talk show was basically the worst television program in the history of the world. Such a shame, really.

We run through the men’s draw, and discuss if it’s really just five people who have a chance to win. Chase thinks it might be less than that, giving a few of his sleeper picks before going with Andy Murray over Federer, with the chance that Roddick or a few others could make things interesting.

On the women’s side, it’s all Serena all the time. Chase gives a few others who can contend, but thinks Serena is too good to lose. And yes, we discuss if he thinks Rick Reilly’s claim that the Williams sisters are under-appreciated and under-covered is fair. We also dance around the racial implications of his column, which is always fun.

Tennis is cool for the next few weeks before the long run of off-season/indoor events and Davis Cup talk (I think) before next year’s Aussie. So get your fill of the US Open while you can. And check out Busted Racquet for all the info (Roddick’s Twitter not included.)

Thanks for listening.

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