So normally, The Stain pays very little attention to tennis, seeing as it’s virtually impossible to drink beer and play effectively at the same time.  However, some pretty funny stuff happened at Indian Wells last week.  Xavier Malisse and his partner Alex Dolgopolov lost in the doubles final to super stud team Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka.  You may be asking yourself, who? Everyone knows who Federer is but not Wawrinka.  Why?  Who cares, it’s tennis.  But anyway, Federer and Wawrinka are probably the best doubles team out there.  They rarely play doubles due to Federer’s overwhelming schedule of singles matches, but they are the defending Olympic gold medalists, and rarely lose when they play.  If anyone would have a chance to wrest the number one doubles ranking from Bob and Mike Bryan, it would be those guys. 

So the funny part is this. Evidently, Malisse and Dolgopolov were hitting some balls back and forth a couple of hours before the deadline to enter the doubles tournament and a version of the following paraphrased conversation happened.

Malisse: “Hey, wanna play doubles?”

Dolgopolov: “With who?  We’re the only ones out here.”

Malisse: “I meant in the tournament.”

Dolgopolov: “Oh. Sure, why not.”

Fast forward to the tournament, they went on a winning streak that included toppling the Bryan brothers on the way to the finals. That’s where the cinderella train came to an end, but only after a super tiebreak, which is a weird 10 point tiebreaker employed when… well, when nobody has won yet. They may not have won, but not bad for a couple guys who joined the tournament on a whim and HAD NEVER COMPETED AS A TEAM BEFORE.

Closing Thought:  I’m going to go out on a limb and venture to say that nobody in the entire country has a perfect March Madness bracket anymore.  Either Butler or Virginia Commonwealth are going to be in the finals and anyone who says they called that one is a liar. 

Other Closing Thought: Why not close with a blatant homer moment. There can’t be a team God hates more than the Los Angeles Kings. I guess he wasn’t paying attention to their excellent play of late, but decided to address it with catastrophic injuries to their two best players, Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams, within a 6 day period.  F. M. L.