Love Match Could Best Describe Web Site

It’s supposed to be about sports, isn’t it?

Sport seemed to tumble into second, or maybe third, place the other day during a routine search of a tennis Web site for Mary Pierce’s results at this week’s Indian Open. Morning Briefing thought it had wandered into a Danielle Steel novel or even stumbled onto the pages of Maxim.

Oddly enough, this was on the tournament’s official Web site:

” ... the fluid grace of a Serena Williams, as she arrests herself in mid-court, thighs taut, designer earrings gleaming in the afternoon sun a moment before she returns an unreturnable volley” and wins an unwinnable point.

“Welcome to the world of women’s tennis. Where beauty blots out brawn. Where glamour and grace mix with guts and grit. Where it’s not all about sport, but a bit about celebrity too.... For your exclusive downloading, and drooling pleasure, here are some of the best images of your favorite women tennis stars in action. Women in superb shape. Shapely superwomen. However you look at them, you will look at them.”

By the way, in case anyone was wondering, Flavia Pennetta of Italy beat Pierce, 7-6 (4) 6-3. And Serena is playing in Paris, not India, this week.

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Trivia time: Who was the first pick in the first NFL draft in 1935?

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Longest shot: 457-1. Were those the odds for the Davis Cup’s first round between Britain and Australia?

No, those are the rankings of the competitors in the first match: Alex Bogdanovic, No. 457 vs. Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, No. 1 in the world.

The longest of odds struck a nerve in the British papers.

The Sun: “Britain’s Davis Cup lambs go to the slaughter in Australia tonight.”

The Telegraph: “Even allowing for the extenuating circumstances, the likelihood is that this could be Britain’s most embarrassing Davis Cup thrashing, with success being counted in terms of games, rather than sets or rubbers.”

It wasn’t that bad. Hewitt won, 7-5, 6-1, 6-2, and Australia took a 2-0 lead.

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Ode to McKay: During the Super Bowl, Cam Cole of the National Post got to thinking about the first coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, John McKay, the best friend of a sportswriter on deadline.

“In any compendium of the great sports quotes of all time, you will find several entries from John McKay,” Cole wrote. “As coach of the all-time worst expansion team, McKay’s primary job description was to make players and fans smile through their misery while feeding the media so many juicy one-liners that a reporter might forget to carve him, the football club and penurious owner Hugh Culverhouse, not necessarily in that order.

“Heaven knows, he had enough material to work with.”

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Trivia answer: Jay Berwanger from the University of Chicago by the Philadelphia Eagles. The first Heisman Trophy winner, Berwanger never played in the league, choosing to pursue business interests.

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And finally: Coach Doug MacLean of the Columbus Blue Jackets, after beating the Nashville Predators, 2-1: “We got an ugly win tonight. I like ugly wins.”