Tennis upheaval

I watched the New York Open final between Federer and Del Potro until 2 am our time, and then seeing that Federer was two sets ahead I decided to go to bed. I was really surprised to wake up in the morning to find that Del Potro had in fact won, what an unexpected turnaround. Certainly Argentinian del Porto who is 20, played well, with his powerful groundstrokes, but mostly Federer beat himself. His first serve percentage was around 43% and he made more double faults than ever before. Del Potro previously beat Cilic, who had beaten Murray, and he defeated Nadal in the semifinal. Maybe there should be a law against such tall players, he is 6'6", but, it's good that there is "new blood" at the top of the game.
The women's game was even more topsy-turvy. Clijsters of Belgium, who had returned from a 2 year hiatus after having a baby, was not expected to be in the running, and the other top three finalists included Oudin, a 17 year old American and Wozniacki, a 19 year old Dane. The old order of the Russians, Safina, Dementieva, Sharapova, Petrova, Kuznetzova, is hopefully receding. Having Safina at no. 1 was an anomaly since she has never won a Grand Slam tournament.
Finally, the reign of the Williams sisters is also hopefully over, not that they haven't been great champions, but the time has come. Venus exited graciously, but Serena's display of bad temper and unsportsmanlike conduct in shouting abuse at the lines person who called a foot fault at game point was disgusting. She has been fined $10,000 and that's good, and let's hope she gets beaten more often so we don't have to see her antics again. She had begun to act as if she owned the top tournaments.
So the upheaval in tennis is another in the process of development and change as the old champions age and the new young blood comes up the ranks. It will make for more exciting tournaments.
I also watched Ronnie ('the Rocket') O'Sullivan win the Shanghai Master's snooker competition. I have been wondering why I love tennis and snooker, that are such different games in speed and temperament. I think it is because they are both individual games, no teams to depend on or to use as an excuse, only one player against another. And they both use a device to manipulate the ball, the tennis raquet and the snooker cue, intermediary between the hand and the ball. Of course, the balls are very different too, but that results from one being on a surface and the other being in the air, but both are great games.