After a month hiatus, I’m jumping back into the blogosphere. The break was longer than I anticipated, so I guess I needed it. I admit that it's taken more than a few cranks to get the engine running and the wheels turning, but I’ll be revving it a bit more in anticipation of my coverage of the women’s year-end championships in Doha in three weeks.

On the tennis front, the circuit scrambles on. Like a lot of folks, I tend to tune out a bit in the early part of the post-U.S. Open fall schedule when the tour shifts to the European indoor swing. I've been keeping tabs on Jelena Jankovic out of the corner of my eye, and I've been impressed with her relentless play. The Serb's three titles in her last three events has her back at No. 1 and well placed to finish the year atop the WTA rankings. She would be the first woman to achieve that feat without having won a major -- a topic to debate if/when she accomplishes it.

On the men’s side, Rafael Nadal is within a couple matches of clinching the year-end No. 1 for the first time after a stellar season that included French Open, Wimbledon and Olympic titles. Second-ranked Roger Federer also returns to the court today for the first time since his U.S. Open win. He is already up a break in the first set over Radek Stepanek as of this posting.

Though the troika atop men’s tennis have put considerable distance between themselves and the rest of the field (Andy Murray’s surging summer notwithstanding), has anyone noticed the incredible variety of

winners on the ATP Tour this year? Igor Kunitsyn’s upset of Marat Safin in Moscow was the 11^th first-time men's winner this year, one of two last week (qualifier Philipp Petzschner over Gael Monfils at Vienna was the other). In 2007, there were only five first-time victors, according to ATP stats guru Greg Sharko.

At the Madrid Masters, James Blake continued his slump with a second-round exit to Gilles Simon and could find himself looking from the outside in at this year’s Masters Cup at Shanghai, where he was a finalist in ’06. In contrast, Robby Ginepri picked up a nice win over Nikolay Davydenko today. Ginepri has had some decent results indoors, particularly in 2005, so he could be a sleeper in Madrid and Paris.

Off the court, the biggest pending situation is the replacement of Etienne de Villiers as chairman and president of the ATP. I’ve done some reporting into this and I’ll address it in my next posting.

In other news, Andre Agassi has apparently split from his childhood friend and longtime agent Perry Rogers, who also represents Shaquille O’Neal. No word on what caused the breakup....Rumors have been swirling that Arlen Kantarian, head of pro tennis for the USTA, might not return. He contract is up this year and his name has also come up as a possible successor to de Villiers….Martina Hingis showed up in Northern California last weekend and Matt Cronin of Fox Sports and Tennisreporters.net did a nice job catching up with the Swiss Miss (the Coke Queen?), who still professes her innocence.