August 2008 Archives

If you know me, then you'll know that every year around this time I make an unshakable attempt at gluing myself in any way to this event.  For two weeks I follow as much as I can in the world of the US Open.  If you don't know me, then briefly - it all goes back to my young days as a little kid, watching the greats like Connors, Becker, Borg, McEnroe, Agassi, Sampras, Evert, Graf and Navratilova.  My father would watch them so I thought it was cool to watch and play.  I then began to play the game in my spare time and in school made varsity my first year, only later to suffer a devastating wrist injury which would lead me to drop out of both tennis and hockey ultimately ending both careers.  Nevertheless, I'm a diehard fan of this great sport and not very much gets in my way of following it.

Granted, I do follow other grand slams and other tournaments, but none with the enthusiasm as the home town favorite... or home nation favorite.  Although, in past years I've been following Wimbledon and the French Open more closely.  The clay and grass have been growing on me lately... maybe it has to do with the tenacity of Nadal or the gracefulness of Federer, causing me to view these two events in a different light.  But things change dramatically when the game is brought to the hard court.  Grace is forced to speed up and tenacity gets taken to a whole other level.  The sheer speed of play action and the ability to grip the court running after a ball makes for an exciting match.

This year, I'm going to try to follow it with the help of a widget seen below.  This widget is available for many different services(Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, etc..).  All it is though is simple script code making it ideal if you wish to embed it in your own Web page.  This little bit of code will help you follow the real-time stats including scores and news, schedules and player statistics.



Click the ADD button to integrate the widget into your favorite services - just try it.  If you're interested in the code, you can select ADD > embed but here is all it looks like:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" 
  data="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/48a32c501ffbc27b/48ae3ea41c0c7e7b/48ab4a4cd6234d68/
b9219bed" 
  id="W48a32c501ffbc27b48ae3ea41c0c7e7b" height="250" width="300">
   <param value="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/48a32c501ffbc27b/48ae3ea41c0c7e7b
/48ab4a4cd6234d68/b9219bed" name="movie"/>
   <param value="transparent" name="wmode"/><param value="all" name="allowNetworking"/>
   <param value="always" name="allowScriptAccess"/>
</object>

Be sure to catch the Open. But I'm confident that if you're a fan then you are well aware that it begins on August 25th.  So join with me and let's give this little widget a try at maximizing our enjoyment of this great event.  Got another application that helps you follow your favorite sports?  Feel free to let me know.